Activists in the administration are likely to take more bites at this apple.
John Kerry couldn’t have been more unequivocal. “No,” Joe Biden’s special climate envoy told the House Foreign Affairs Oversight Committee last Thursday. “Under no circumstances” will the United States disburse taxpayer funds to the nations that suffer national disasters attributed by some to the influence of climate change.
The envoy’s steadfastness is reassuring, but it’s hardly a sufficient guarantee given the source. If the former Massachusetts senator is willing to dissemble before Congress about who precisely owns that private jet in which he maintains a seven-figure stake, we can deduce that he’s not overly concerned about the verdict that history will render in relation to America’s commitment to providing the developing world with “climate reparations.”
In November 2022, the nations in attendance at the annual U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP27) agreed to establish a “loss and damages” fund designed to compensate “climate-vulnerable countries” for suffering the ravages visited on them by virtue of the developed world’s industrial capacity. The Biden administration pledged in 2021 to provide $11.4 billion annually to international reserves dedicated to helping the developing world navigate climate change, but his ambitions were largely thwarted by the ascension of the House GOP majority in 2023. If the Biden administration’s plan to redistribute American largess to overseas recipients failed, it wasn’t for lack of trying. And it’s reasonable to expect that the activists in the administration are going to take more bites at this apple.
The Center for American Progress has outlined what it expects to see from Kerry’s office, which will represent the United States on the “Transitional Committee” tasked with operationalizing the fund and securing funding commitments:
Overall, both public and private climate finance must drastically increase in the next decade, with a 20 percent year-on-year increase, or at least $4.3 trillion in annual finance flows by 2030, to avoid the worst climate impacts. Financing must also benefit the most vulnerable communities—low- and middle-income countries received less than 25 percent of climate finance flows in 2011–2020—and address both the slow-onset impacts of climate change as well as natural disasters.
Funding this mammoth undertaking won’t be easy. CAP suggests the Biden administration commit to an aggressive confiscatory taxation scheme and incentivize private and charitable financial efforts to transfer American wealth abroad. For its part, the Biden White House already brags about its efforts to send hundreds of millions of dollars to the developing world to augment “effective adaptation and resilience” programs and schemes for climate-related migration mitigation, but none of it can be strictly considered restitution.
At least, the activist class wouldn’t call it that. Your mileage may vary. If, however, Kerry’s instincts are correct, the United States will never outright admit to providing a foreign government with “climate reparations.” Now, when it comes to payments into the “losses and damages,” “adaptation and reliance,” and “migration multi-partner” funds, well, that’s another story.