How Joe Biden Is Forcing Jair Bolsonaro's Hand On Climate Change

     Let's get one thing clear: I do not trust Jair Bolsonaro as far as I would have to go to make him either frown or only smile in a creepy, threatening way. The man is guilty of ecocide and genocide against the Amazon and the Amazonians, and he was a convicted criminal before he took office. That's without mentioning his handling of COVID-19. I merely have an interesting observation to make that highlights American diplomacy has a unique role in the world, and that, for the first time, it can be used in earnest to fight climate change.

     It took the oil spill and fire surge in 2019 to force Brazil to reckon with the reality of climate change and garner enough outrage to force Bolsonaro to take action. This right-wing nutjob had defunded and rolled back Amazon protections and other environmental rules for years, and suddenly he announced a plan to make Brazil carbon neutral by 2060 in December 2020. Carbon neutrality is good, but our species would be finished before our plan if we waited until 2060.

     When President Biden took office in 2021, he made climate change a priority, halting oil and gas leases on federal land, halting the Keystone XL pipeline, restoring environmental regulations Trump had done away with, rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, announcing a plan to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030, making the federal vehicle fleet electric, and proposing a Civilian Climate Corps, among other moves. He also hosted an Earth Day Climate Summit that saw world leaders increase their pledges to fight climate change. 

     Among them was Jair Bolsonaro, who did a flip and promised to make Brazil carbon neutral by 2050, not 2060, and double enforcement of environmental laws in the Amazon. Whether or not he will keep this promise remains to be seen, but is demonstrates that he is sensitive to international pressure. To activists around the world working to protect the green lungs of this planet: you have your mandate, and President Biden helped deliver it.