Kerry Aims to Talk US Back Into a Lead Role in Climate Fight

January 27, 2021by Ellen Knickmeyer, Associated Press
Kerry Aims to Talk US Back Into a Lead Role in Climate Fight
Former Secretary of State John Kerry arrives for the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, Pool)

From a wood-paneled library in his Boston mansion, new climate envoy John Kerry is talking the U.S. back into a leading role in global climate action, making clear the nation isn’t just revving up its own efforts to reduce oil, gas and coal pollution but that it intends to push everyone in the world to do more, too.

Kerry’s diplomatic efforts match the fast pace of domestic climate directives by the week-old Biden administration, which created the job Kerry now holds. Those directives include a Biden order expected Wednesday spelling out how U.S. intelligence, defense and homeland security agencies should address the security threats posed by worsening droughts, floods and other natural disasters under global warming.

At 77, Kerry is working to make a success out of the global climate accord that he helped negotiate in Paris as President Barack Obama’s secretary of state — and that he then saw rejected by President Donald Trump, who also spurned all other Obama-era legacy efforts to wean the U.S. and global economies off climate-damaging fossil fuels.

Success for Kerry is hardly assured. At home, he faces pushback from the oil and gas industry and hears concerns that jobs will be lost. Internationally, there’s uncertainty about whether Biden’s climate commitments can survive the United States’ intensely divided politics, let alone the next presidential transition.

Meanwhile, environmentalists are pushing him to be aggressive — even demonstrating outside his house on his first full day on the job.

Underscoring the urgency, Kerry — working from his home on Boston’s patrician Beacon Hill during the COVID-19 pandemic — sat before a computer screen and started talking before sunup last Thursday, his first full day in his new job, to a global business forum in Europe.

Since then, he has spoken virtually with U.S. mayors, foreign presidents and premiers, government ministers and others, until the light from the setting sun slides down the gilt spines of the shelves of leather-bound books in his library.

Kerry exhorts: Put your big one-off COVID-19 economic recovery funding into projects that boost cleaner energy. Get green projects going fast in Republican-leaning U.S. states to prove renewable energy can mean jobs and build needed political support. Get everyone to talk to China about things like stopping the building of dirty-burning coal-fired power plants.

If China and the U.S., as the world’s No. 1 and 2 top carbon emitters, don’t spell out exactly how they will curb climate-damaging emissions more quickly, “we’re all going to lose credibility,” Kerry told an online gathering of American mayors last weekend.

The U.S. has to have the “credibility to go to the table, show people what we’re doing and push them to do more,” Kerry said then. “So everybody can can understand it’s not fake, it’s not a phony, empty promise — it really is getting real.”

Kerry is a full-time principal member for climate on the White House’s National Security Council. The role acknowledges what climate and military experts say will be growing conflicts around the world as climate change increases competition for natural resources. It takes into account a lack of U.S. readiness to protect military installations and overall infrastructure from worsening flooding and other natural disasters as temperatures rise.

By giving someone of Kerry’s stature a job with equally high prominence, Biden aims to “bring the climate issue into the conversation” on national security matters routinely, said John Podesta, a climate counselor for Obama and a White House chief of staff for President Bill Clinton.

Kerry is expected to have desks at both the White House and the State Department.

In the meantime, the home library where Kerry now holds most of his big online meetings earned him a 10 out of 10 from the popular “Room Rater” Twitter account that judges the backdrop décor in people’s Zoom calls and TV appearances. That’s despite expressing doubt about whether it was a room or a set.

Kerry and other Biden administration climate leaders will be working to set a tougher goal for the U.S. for cutting emissions, as well as making good on pledges to increase climate funding for poorer countries.

On Thursday, the progressive Sunrise Movement’s Boston branch had demonstrators outside his Boston house holding signs saying “Kerry be brave.” The move shows the left keeping up pressure for what could be a politically tricky level of aggressiveness on cutting fossil fuels.

“Our role is … now to hold them accountable,” Sunrise Movement spokesperson Ellen Sciales said Tuesday, and keep them “pushing us forward to meet the scale and the urgency of the climate crisis.”

On the right, some Republican lawmakers and the politically influential oil and gas industry have been subdued in the first week of the Biden administration, saying they hope to work with Kerry and others on climate efforts.

Kerry told the mayors he talked with Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia at Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration. Kerry said he and Manchin, who has fought climate regulation he sees threatening his coal state’s economy, agreed: Winning the U.S. fight on climate change will depend on getting renewable-energy jobs into places like West Virginia and Tennessee as soon as possible.

Then, “boom, you will begin to have believers,” Kerry declared from his library. “They’re not going to believe it when we just say it. We have to do it.”

A+
a-
  • climate change
  • Joe Biden
  • John Kerry
  • renewable energy
  • In The News

    Health

    Voting

    Climate

    March 20, 2024
    by Dan McCue
    White House Unveils Sweeping Rules to Speed Switch to Cleaner Cars

    WASHINGTON — The Biden-Harris administration on Wednesday rolled out an ambitious new regulatory regime aimed at bolstering the standards of... Read More

    WASHINGTON — The Biden-Harris administration on Wednesday rolled out an ambitious new regulatory regime aimed at bolstering the standards of electric and hybrid vehicles by placing new restrictions on tailpipe emissions. According to administration officials, who briefed reporters on the new rules during a conference call... Read More

    March 15, 2024
    by Tom Ramstack
    Senate Told Growing Wildfire Threat Needs New Strategies

    WASHINGTON — The number of wildfires driven by climate change has grown but the U.S. effort to control them has... Read More

    WASHINGTON — The number of wildfires driven by climate change has grown but the U.S. effort to control them has not, according to emergency response officials at a Senate hearing Thursday. At least not fast enough to prevent disasters like the fire that ravaged Maui in... Read More

    Storm Carrying Massive 'Gorilla Hail' Hits Parts of Kansas and Missouri

    ST. LOUIS (AP) — Massive chunks of hail pelted parts of Kansas and Missouri on Wednesday night, bringing traffic to... Read More

    ST. LOUIS (AP) — Massive chunks of hail pelted parts of Kansas and Missouri on Wednesday night, bringing traffic to a standstill along Interstate 70, as storms unleashed possible tornadoes and meteorologists urged residents to stay indoors. There were three unconfirmed reports of tornadoes in Wabaunsee... Read More

    Climate, a Major Separator for Biden and Trump, Is a Dividing Line in Many Other Races

    RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The race for the White House isn’t the only one with big stakes for climate policy.... Read More

    RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The race for the White House isn’t the only one with big stakes for climate policy. In campaigns for Congress and for governor around the country, candidates are talking about how green the grid should be, too. Voters are increasingly feeling the impacts... Read More

    The First-Ever European Climate Risk Assessment Finds a Continent Unprepared for Growing Extremes

    Europe is facing growing climate risks and is unprepared for them, the European Environment Agency said in its first-ever risk... Read More

    Europe is facing growing climate risks and is unprepared for them, the European Environment Agency said in its first-ever risk assessment for the bloc Monday. The agency said Europe is prone to more frequent and more punishing weather extremes — including increasing wildfires, drought, more unusual... Read More

    Fewer Fish and More Algae? Scientists Seek to Understand Impacts of Historic Lack of Great Lakes Ice

    RACINE, Wis. (AP) — Michigan Tech University biologists have been observing a remote Lake Superior island's fragile wolf population every... Read More

    RACINE, Wis. (AP) — Michigan Tech University biologists have been observing a remote Lake Superior island's fragile wolf population every winter since 1958, but they had to cut this season's planned seven-week survey short after just two weeks. The ski plane they study the wolves from... Read More

    News From The Well
    scroll top