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It’s easy to make climate promises. It is more difficult to hold them.

take note $1.5 trillion spending bill It passed the US Congress last week. Included $1 billion in climate aid. That’s less than half of what the White House wanted and well below what was expected. The $11.4 billion President Biden promised To deliver annually until 2024.

Rachel Kyte, a senior climate diplomat and currently dean of Tufts University’s Fletcher School, tweeted:thin climate finance oatmeal”

The money on the spending bill is mostly meant to help poor countries cope with the accelerating risks of global warming and the risks of moving away from fossil fuels. Mohamed Adow, an activist with Power Shift Africa, described the $1 billion allocation as “terrible”.

“Many countries in the global south have made their climate commitments dependent on receiving substantial climate finance,” Adow said. Said. “Once the US fails to keep its funding promises, it will destroy all hope that these countries will be able to meet their emissions reduction targets,” he said.

Rich, industrialized countries as a whole fell far short of their promise more than a decade ago to collect $100 billion in climate aid each year starting in 2020. responsible for the largest greenhouse gas emissions in historyis under particularly keen scrutiny. contributes less than it does. Overseas Development Institutea London think tank and others are considering their fair share.

Extreme weather events accelerated by climate change are expensive. Hurricane Sandy in 2012 did $60 billion in damage. this 2018 forest fires He claimed $148.5 billion in damages in California, according to a peer-reviewed study.

With Congress dedicating $1 billion to international climate finance in this year’s budget, it’s like a reality check on the speeches of US officials when it comes to climate issues. Even last week, just before Congress approved the spending package, US climate ambassador John Kerry told members of the United Nations Security Council that there would be progress in meeting the $100 billion target.

“It’s been a year where Secretary Kerry, President Biden and other administration officials said, ‘The United States is back, we are the climate leaders,’ but there really is a lack of delivery,” said Joe Thwaites, who follows climate finance. World Resources Institute. “Trying to teach other countries a lesson but not being able to invest in climate action is not going to go very well.”

Sent an informative message Twitter series about the shortcomings and their effects.

We take a look at what management wants in its budget request for the next fiscal year. It could come as soon as this week.

The shortfall was particularly notable as it emerged only two weeks after a global panel of scientists begged world leaders to fund climate adaptation. The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in a comprehensive report released in late February, concluded that they are the poorest countries in the world. They will likely need hundreds of billions of dollars each year over the next few decades to protect themselves from climate shocks, including the world’s major coastal cities at risk of sea level rise.

One of the most populated and most vulnerable is Mumbai, the commercial capital of India and home to around 20 million people. The IPCC warned it could face $162 billion in losses from rising seas by 2050. This week the city unveiled an ambitious project. climate plan own. He said he plans to get half of his electricity from renewable sources by 2030, support flood defenses and expand the green cover to help residents cope with heat stress.

As if it were the beacon, Mumbai faced an unseasonable heatwave warning, with temperatures approaching 104 degrees Fahrenheit, or 40 degrees Celsius, well above normal for mid-March.

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Before you go: Not every tree planting helps the planet

As the climate crisis deepens, businesses and consumers are joining nonprofit groups and governments in a global tree-planting boom. These efforts could be a triple win, providing livelihoods, absorbing and trapping planet-warming carbon dioxide, and improving the health of ecosystems. But when done poorly, projects can exacerbate the problems they need to solve. To find out how read our article here.

Thank you for reading. We’ll be back on Friday.

Claire O’Neill and Douglas Alteen contributed to Climate Forward.

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