At the COP27 climate summit in Egypt earlier this month, American diplomats appointed by President Biden agreed to pay poor countries for supposed damage caused by America’s emitting carbon dioxide.

This represents a major reversal in U.S. climate policy. Similar agreements had previously been blocked by both the Obama and Trump administrations, and for good reason: The “loss and damage” fund is both incredibly expensive and could be used to create a legal liability for greenhouse-gas emissions.

In short, it is a total shakedown. A major beneficiary of the deal is China, despite the fact that it has much higher emissions than the United States.

Even U.S. Special Climate Envoy John Kerry, a man certainly not reputed for downplaying global warming, recently said that the United States would not sign on to establishing such a fund: “It’s a well-known fact that the United States and many other countries will not establish . . . some sort of legal structure that is tied to compensation or liability. That’s just not happening.”