During a landmark visit to the Amazon rainforest Sunday, President Joe Biden highlighted his climate legacy, declaring that no one can reverse America’s green transition as President-elect Donald Trump’s fossil-friendly policies loom large.
Biden is the first sitting U.S. president to visit the world’s largest tropical rainforest, which plays a vital role in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere but is under growing threat from climate change.
During an aerial tour from his Marine One helicopter, Biden saw dried-up riverbeds, eroded shores and plumes of smoke from the Amazon’s worst forest fires in two decades, which have burned millions of acres this year and greatly disrupted life for its Indigenous communities.
Speaking afterward at the Museum of the Amazon in Manaus, Brazil, Biden said the fight against climate change had been a “defining cause” of his presidency. He cited the Inflation Reduction Act he signed in 2022, which together with other legislation provides $450 billion in clean energy funding, he said, as well as creates hundreds of thousands of jobs and positions the U.S. to cut its carbon emissions in half by 2030.
Biden also said Sunday that the U.S. had surpassed his goal of delivering $11 billion per year in climate financing to developing countries by 2024, a more than sixfold increase from when he took over from Trump in 2021. That makes the U.S. the largest bilateral provider of climate finance in the world, the White House said.
Biden began his term by bringing the U.S. back into the Paris Agreement, an international treaty on climate change that Trump had withdrawn from. Trump, a climate change skeptic, has said he will withdraw from the agreement again, as well as loosen restrictions on oil and gas exploration.
Without mentioning Trump by name, Biden said he had left his successor and his country a “strong foundation to build on, if they choose to do so.”
While some may seek to delay the country’s green transition, “nobody can reverse it, nobody,” Biden said, “not when so many people, regardless of party or politics, are enjoying its benefits.”
Spanning nine countries and home to more than 10% of the planet’s known species, the Amazon rainforest is at the front line of the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss. According to the World Wildlife Fund, 17% of its forests had been entirely lost as of 2022, while another 17% had been degraded.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has vowed to halt illegal deforestation by 2030.
Biden announced $50 million for the Amazon Fund, a Brazilian government initiative to combat deforestation, bringing total U.S. contributions to $100 million out of the $500 million Biden promised last year.
He also met with Indigenous and other leaders and signed a U.S. proclamation designating Nov. 17 as International Conservation Day.
Biden’s Amazon visit is part of a six-day trip to South America, his first to the continent as president. Before he arrived in Brazil, he attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Peru, where he had a final meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Next, he heads to Rio de Janeiro for a summit of the Group of 20 economies.
The 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP29, is being held in Azerbaijan. The conference, which is focused on climate finance, has been marked by the absence of leaders from some major economies — which are also some of the world’s biggest polluters — including the U.S., China, India and Japan. Brazil is set to host the conference next year.
U.S. climate envoy John Podesta told the conference last week that Trump could slow but not stop the U.S. transition away from fossil fuels.
“The work to contain climate change is going to continue in the United States,” he said.
