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John Kerry, special presidential envoy for climate, in his office at the US state department, on Tuesday, February 6, 2024, in Washington DC (AP) |
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John Kerry, who has led the United States' climate mission on the global stage for the past three years, stepped down on Wednesday.
The special presidential envoy for climate, 80, announced that he was stepping down in January. "In three years, Secretary Kerry has tirelessly trekked around the world – bringing American climate leadership back from the brink and marshalling countries around the world to take historic action to confront the climate crisis," Jeff Zients, White House chief of staff, said in a statement to The Independent at the time.
The former senator and secretary of state was an obvious choice for President Joe Biden, who created the role after winning the 2020 election. Mr Kerry had been a key negotiator of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit average temperature rise to 1.5C, or well below 2C, to prevent catastrophic climate impacts.
Appointing the elder statesman signaled that America was back in the global climate fight, after four years in the wilderness under former president Donald Trump. "The world will know that one of my closest friends, John Kerry, is speaking for America on one of the most pressing threats of our time," Mr Biden said.
But the selection of Mr Kerry also provoked the ire of Republicans and conservative media who goaded him over his international trips, and claimed that he regularly traveled by private jet. Mr Kerry pushed back on that accusation during a House committee hearing last year, calling it "one of the most outrageously persistent lies that I hear".
"I don't own a private jet. I personally have never owned a private jet," he said.
A family jet belonging primarily to his wife, the billionaire philanthropist Teresa Heinz, had been sold, he said – though he did not expand on when.
Mr Kerry's gravitas and experience in public life proved critical in making progress on the climate crisis with China. He underlined the importance of this cooperation even in the face of China's human rights abuses, and tensions with the US over trade, territories and a myriad of issues.
China "is critical to our being able to solve this problem," Mr Kerry told US lawmakers last year. (The country is currently the world's largest emitter, while the US is historically responsible for the most carbon emissions.)
In particular, Mr Kerry's long friendship with Xie Zhenhua, China's climate envoy, appears to have been pivotal. The pair were often spotted having one-on-one sidebars, or walking together at global climate summits, their presence heralded by a flock of aides. At Cop28, Mr Xie and his eight-year-old grandson attended an 80th birthday party for Mr Kerry.
Bloomberg reported earlier this week that Mr Kerry and Mr Xie received the blessing of their respective leaders to meet in Beijing in early 2021 in the midst of Covid lockdowns. These talks led to a US-China joint declaration at Cop26 in Glasgow later that year, to "enhance" climate action in the 2020s.
Talks then stalled for months due to heightened US-China tensions before resuming in 2023. The two climate envoys were present in California in November when Mr Biden and China's leader, Xi Jinping, reaffirmed their commitment to work together to address the climate crisis.
This agreement between the world's two superpowers laid groundwork for Cop28 weeks later, where the final deal included for the first time a call for transitioning away from oil, coal and gas this decade. The United Nations hailed it as "the beginning of the end for the fossil fuel era".
Still, there is much left to do. While US emissions fell last year, and China's are set to do so in 2024, both are still heavily invested in the fossil fuel industry, and emissions are not falling fast enough to meet global targets. China permitted more coal plants last year than all of 2021, according to Greenpeace, even as it carries out a historic rollout of clean energy. The US is the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, and is producing more oil than any nation in history.
Aside from US-China relations, Mr Kerry's work as climate envoy has focused on strategies like rallying countries behind global pledges to cut potent greenhouse gas methane, and halt and reverse deforestation by 2030.
He has also championed public-private partnerships, citing the need to get the corporate world on board to drum up the trillions of dollars needed to slash global emissions by the levels required.
"That's one of the reasons why I am so focused on the private sector," Kerry told The Associated Press last week.
The strategy also appeared designed to insulate progress from the potential shocks of another Trump presidency. Mr Kerry told The AP that the pace of climate action now means that "no one person can reverse what the world is doing now".
Though he is exiting the climate envoy role, Mr Kerry has made it clear that he isn't putting his feet up. "I am not retiring, folks," he said at Davos in January. Instead, he confirmed last week that he is shifting gears to work on Mr Biden's re-election campaign, which looks likely to be a grueling rematch with Mr Trump.
He also plans to attend Cop29 in Baku, Azerbaijan later this year where the US delegation will be led by White House senior adviser John Podesta.
"I am not leaving the climate fight," Mr Kerry said.
Read the full article here
More climate news this week from The Independent:
A growing number of women in South Asia are falling victim to an alarming consequence of the climate crisis, as clean water becomes more scarce – losing their hair.
The Earth has obliterated global heat records for the ninth straight month — with February, winter as a whole, and the world's oceans setting new high-temperature marks, according to the European Union climate agency Copernicus.
The Arctic could see its first "ice-free" summer days, in the next few years, researchers have said. Ice cover has been declining as a result of rising global heat.
Artificial intelligence has the potential to "supercharge" climate disinformation. New research found that generative AI could escalate disinformation online, including climate-related deepfakes, during an election year when countries including the UK and the US head to the polls with environmental policies at the centre of some campaigns.
Scientists are studying if tiny specks of plastic in our body can cause heart attacks - a new line of inquiry as evidence grows over the dangers of plastic pollution.
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Given the strong El Nino since mid-2023, it's not surprising to see above-normal global temperatures, as El Ninos pump heat from the ocean into the atmosphere, driving up air temperatures. But the amount by which records have been smashed is alarming. |
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Life in the climate crisis | |
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