MANAUS, Brazil — President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to roll back President Biden's clean energy incentives when he takes office in January. But on Sunday, Biden used a trip to the Amazon to defiantly assert that his legacy on addressing climate change could not be easily reversed.
"Some may seek to deny or delay the clean energy revolution that's underway in America, but nobody — nobody — can reverse it. Nobody," Biden said in remarks from a rainforest preserve.
Biden is the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Amazon, a quick stop that was meant as a capstone for his work on climate, made between two summits he is attending in South America.
He took an aerial tour of a region that has been through two years of drought, and looked at areas where trees had been illegally harvested. Then, he walked along a dirt path through the edge of the rainforest, meeting with indigenous leaders and Nobel laureate Dr. Carlos Nobre, who studies how climate change affects the Amazon.
Noting that he is about to leave office, Biden checked off his climate accomplishments, noting that his clean energy investments could help the United States cut carbon emissions in half by 2030.
"I will leave my successor and my country the strong foundation to build on, if they choose to do so," he said, arguing that clean energy investments were helping create jobs. "The question now is, which government will stand in the way and which will seize the enormous economic opportunity?"
Trump left the Paris accord. Biden rejoined it. Now, Trump is poised to quit it again.
On Biden's first day in office, he signed an order for the United States to rejoin the Paris climate agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Trump had withdrawn from the accord when he first took office in 2017 — and he has promised to leave it again when he takes office in January.
Trump has vowed to gut the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden's landmark climate legislation that contains the largest federal clean energy investment in U.S. history.
The White House has been working to try to get funding, initiatives and regulations on the books before Biden leaves, anticipating the changes ahead.
On Sunday, Biden said he had fulfilled a pledge to increase international climate aid to $11 billion. He met with officials from Mombak Gestora de Recursos, a company replanting trees with investments from big tech companies like Microsoft, which get carbon reduction emission credits, in exchange. The U.S. government is giving Mombak a $37.5 million loan for its project.
And he announced $50 million for Brazil's Amazon Fund, bringing the total U.S. contribution to $100 million. Biden last year had pledged $500 million to the fund over five years.
Asked about the likelihood of the incoming Trump administration fulfilling the rest of that pledge, a senior U.S. official told reporters traveling with Biden: "Who knows? Maybe he'll come down here and see the forest and see the damage being done from the drought and other things and change his mind about climate change."
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