Biden casts America as climate leader, while activs push him to do more

President Joe Biden appeared before an overflowing United Nations convention Friday to reclaim America’s role as a leader on climate change and to stress a renewed U.S. commitment to stop the planet from catastrophic warming.
Biden came to Egypt as the president who muscled through a landmark climate law, one that provides a record $370 billion to accelerate America’s transition away from the fossil fuels that have underpinned its economy for 150 years.
At the summit, known as COP27, he spoke of how he immediately returned the United States to the 2015 Paris climate agreement upon taking office after his predecessor, President Donald Trump, had withdrawn the country. “I apologize that we ever pulled out of the agreement,” he told the gathering.
Biden’s speech came at the midpoint of a two-week summit that has focused not so much on cutting the pollution that is driving climate change, but on the question of what, if anything, industrialized countries owe poor nations that are grappling with climate disasters for which they are ill-prepared and which they did little to cause.
For the first time, the idea of climate reparations, known in diplomatic circles as “loss and damage,” is on the formal agenda at the U.N. climate talks. For years, the United States and other wealthy nations have blocked calls for loss and damage funding, concerned that it would open them up to unlimited liability.
But this week, leaders of several European countries said they support the creation of a loss and damage fund and made cash pledges, putting pressure on the Americans.
Biden visited Egypt as part of a foreign relations trip that also includes stops in Cambodia and Indonesia, where he is expected to meet with President Xi Jinping of China during a gathering of the Group of 20.
Climate activs and diplomats are hoping that the men, who represent the world’s two largest economies as well as the two biggest greenhouse gas emitters, might restart discussions about working together on climate action. Angered House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, China suspended those talks in August.
During his remarks at COP27, Biden made no mention of climate reparations. That disappointed some activs and diplomats, particularly those from developing nations.