Outgoing U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry discusses his time as the Joe Biden administration’s climate change pointsman. He also sheds light on the administration’s achievements and ongoing priorities to combat climate change at a briefing organised by the Washington Foreign Press Center. United States Bureau Chief OLUKOREDE YISHAU attended the briefing. Excerpts:
In the beginning
In November of 2020, when President-elect Biden called me about this job, he was, at the time, determined to earn back with appropriate humility America’s credibility, and to work with all countries – the world’s largest emitters particularly – in order to raise ambition and deal with this global crisis.
We held an historic leaders summit at the White House in the East Room virtually – you may recall, in the heart of the early days of COVID. President Xi attended virtually, President Putin. We had all the leaders of the top economies of the world. And that was really the place where we began to try to raise urgency and ambition regarding the climate crisis.
The result of that was to actually raise the NDCs – national determined contributions – of countries around the world, and to begin to say to the world, look, we – the president preceding pulled out of Paris, had a different view about this issue, but we’re back to common sense and normality. The President made it clear by signing the re-entry to the Paris Agreement within hours of being sworn on January 20th.
And as a centerpiece of that climate diplomacy, we began immediately to try to deal with the finance issue. We were very sensitive to the fact that for a number of years, 100 billion had been promised from the developed world to the developing world that had not been delivered, and it was really a source of – a sore point, if you will, between countries. So we wanted to eliminate that. We wanted to address it. And I’m proud to tell you that despite the cynicism and to some degree anger that existed, we actually delivered on the 100 billion in 2022. And again in ’23, and again this year, we’re on track to do so. So I think we’ve made a huge leap forward on that.
When Biden assumed duties
The President, when he came in, there was a residual amount of money that had been put in the budget by President Obama quickly before he left, realizing that there might be a problem – and he was right. And so we had about 1.5 billion at that point in time. We are today at about 9.5 billion and climbing to the 11 billion that the President promised this year.
To address the urgent needs of those on the front lines – because we were constantly hearing in my visits to Africa, to South Asia, Bangladesh, different places – we heard a great deal about vulnerability, and about the challenge of the developing world to be able to transition away from coal and into new sources of clean energy. To help with that, President Biden announced his emergency program, the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience, called PREPARE. And the PREPARE program is now – it’s about $12 billion over three, four – four, five years. And it is geared now – right now – seeking to help more than half a billion people worldwide to cope with the rising crisis of the climate crisis itself.
We put – amazingly, when I was in Paris, I remember well there was not any interest in a broad discussion about methane. And methane was hardly mentioned, ironically, amazingly, because methane is responsible for 50 percent of warming the planet. So in Glasgow, President Biden joined with President Ursula von der Leyen in order to put on the table the methane pledge. And we started with about 20, 22 countries. We now have 155 countries that have signed the methane pledge – most recently, I think, the – Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, which is important. We put super-pollutants on the top of the agenda.
The Global Methane Pledge
And through the Global Methane Pledge, we’re now on track – we believe – in a lot of countries to hit the target of a 30 percent reduction by 2030, which is absolutely essential. And methane presents an even bigger challenge, because with the thawing of the permafrost, methane is coming up just naturally through the earth. And that’s what we call fugitive gas, and it’s very complicated to try to be able to grab that gas and put it to use.
We mobilized over $1 billion at UAE COP in Dubai, and we have seen new grant funding help to meet that goal ever since COP27. We tapped into the power of private capital through the Agricultural Innovation Mission – the AIM4C program. We started the First Movers Coalition, which has brought major companies, some of the top corporations in the world – Microsoft, Google, Apple, Salesforce, FedEx, Ford Motor Company, General Motors – a whole group of companies have pledged to buy green products now, and in doing so send a signal to the marketplace about the availability of solutions which other companies and other people could take advantage of. And we hope that this is going to accelerate the production of green cement, green concrete, of dealing with the shipping industry, which I’ll mention something about for a minute.
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Shipping as a major emitters
The shipping – if shipping were a country globally, shipping would be the eighth largest emitter in the world. And we now have major companies, shipping companies – NSC, Yara, Maersk, others – that have joined in converting their ships to carbon free propulsion. And as a result of the IMO change in policy which we’ve been advocating and which took place last summer, we now see that the whole shipping fleet – maritime fleet of the world – will probably transition to zero carbon propulsion by the next 20 years. That’s an enormous advance.
In addition, we – I think – helped in our negotiations with China to be able to really change people’s attitudes of what was possible. And China came to the table. China and the United States held four days of negotiations in Sunnylands, California after major negotiations in Davos, in Stockholm, in Berlin, in Beijing, in Tianjin, in Shanghai. So we had a lot of meetings face to face, and we also had a lot of Zoom meetings and virtual meetings.
And in Dubai at – in building the UAE Consensus, we were able to bring people together around the idea that all greenhouse gases must be part of your NDC. And next year that will be true that – we agreed that everybody must join in this effort. We achieved something very significant in the UAE, which was what now really provides the UAE Consensus. And that consensus begins with the words, “transitioning away from fossil fuel” – the first time in history that fossil fuel has been embraced within the confines of a COP agreement.
And that agreement means that not only will there be a transition away, but there are modifying phrases in that paragraph that are very critical. And it says, in a fair, orderly, equitable manner so as to – accelerating in this decade – so as to achieve net zero 2050, according to the science. “According to the science” means 1.5 degrees. So there’s now a new urgency to trying to keep 1.5 degrees alive. And in fact, the IEA tells us that if all the promises made in Glasgow and all the promises made at Sharm El-Sheikh are followed through on, we would be at 1.7 to 1.8 degrees of warming by 2050. Now, we’re waiting to hear what difference does the UAE Consensus make in being able to move in that direction. And we’re very hopeful that we will be pleasantly informed by the UAE. We can’t speculate on what it will be now.
Where we are
We have changed the dynamic from when I came into this job, we were heading somewhere outwards of four degrees of warming. Now, we’re not yet holding yet at 1.5, we’re heading to 2.5, but that’s a lot better than where we were. And there are new technologies coming online. There’s incredible now energy in electrolyzers, hydrogen, battery storage, new batteries, fusion, the possibilities of exploitation of geothermal is much greater than it was, because we now have much greater knowledge about how to do it.
And so I’m personally optimistic, but only if we do the things we promised to do. This will be expensive to make the transition through investment. No country in the world has enough money to do this by itself. But if we mobilize the private sector into infrastructure, new grids, water treatment facilities, transportation, laying down the power lines and so forth – those are jobs. Those are jobs for electricians, and heavy equipment operators, and plumbers, and steel workers, and so forth.
And so this is a moment of looking at the greatest economic transition that is potential there, if we seize the baton and we go do it. And it is larger even than the Industrial Revolution transformation that took place in the 1800s and early 1900s. That’s our possibility, and there’s no question in my mind that if we do what we know how to do and what we promised to do, we will actually make the world – I mean, let me stop myself and just put one thing in front of you.
Currently 7 million people are dying around the world every year because of pollution, because of bad air quality. That’s greenhouse gas pollution, folks. We know what we have to do. It’s the burning of fossil fuel and not capturing it, the emissions, that is the problem. So we don’t need a new algorithm defined; we don’t need a rocket scientist to define what’s the problem. We know what the problem is; it’s simple. It’s us, the choices we make about how we light our homes, our factories, power our vehicles, and so forth. And we have new technologies available now to avoid this crisis if we choose to do so.
That’s the test in front of the world. And I intend to not move away from this fight. While I’m leaving the job that I’m in today, I believe I’m going to liberate myself to actually be more engaged in the transition itself, trying to accelerate bringing the capital to the table, bringing the partnerships that are necessary. It’s labor-intensive; it takes people on the ground. But we have to create the bankable deals that will excite that capital so we can begin to grow in the different direction. And we will wind up with a world that is safer, that is more prosperous, that is cleaner, and healthier.
And no one should doubt that that’s the other side of this journey of transition. It’s positive. It’s not something to be scared of. It’s something to embrace, and the sooner we get to it, the sooner we’re able to enjoy the jobs and the benefits that will come with it.
The next COP
The expectations of the next COP are actually defined already to some degree by the UAE Consensus. The next COP is going to be largely focused on finance – not exclusively, but finance will be the big challenge. Because the 100 billion annual donation language has expired, will expire, so now we need the successor on 100 billion. And the question will be: Will the donor base to that process grow? Will other countries that could be capable of providing more income and more donation – will they, in fact, step up and help to accelerate this transition?
Secondly, there will obviously be further expectations and considerations regarding the new impact fund, the fund that’s been created to try to deal with the negative impacts and was stood up, appropriately, and everybody agreed to what it should be in the UAE Consensus. And now that has to be given life even further in Baku.
And then finally, of course, the other commitments that had been made. I mean, the COP obviously needs to embrace the full breadth of the UAE Consensus and make sure that that is really being implemented by countries. And then finally, new NDCs are due next February, one year from now. You don’t begin to work on those when you get to Baku. You have to be working on those now so people can really begin to realize that you’re ready to take this where it needs to go coming February of next year with the new NDCs. And that’s really critical for everybody. Those are the key things, I think.
With respect to – every country has high expectations about how people will be treated, and the United States raises those issues consistently in our diplomacy. And I’m sure that we and other countries will continue to do as much as we can to create reality in the words “fair, orderly, and equitable.” Those are very important concepts to be applied to how people will be treated.
The U.S.-China climate cooperation efforts
We just had a very constructive, virtual meeting, Zoom meeting, with the new envoy and myself and John Podesta. And we held this meeting, what, two days ago, I guess, so that I could sort of introduce John to their team and likewise, Liu Zhenhua – excuse me – Zhenmin could also introduce himself to us. And we know him because he was at the United Nations and he’s been a vice minister and so forth through time.
What we hope is also that the working group that we put together is there sort of as an ongoing platform from which they can now really operationalize what Xie Zhenhua and I laid out regarding circular economy, regarding methane and non-CO2 gases, regarding coal and the retirement of coal. So the agenda is already very clear. And Xie Zhenhua and I have – just by happenstance to some degree, he’s affiliated with Tsinghua University. I will be going back and doing some stuff with Yale University, where I had an initiative that was involved with some of the students and a group of fellows within that initiative who were doing research and work.
So we’re going to try to see if we can’t stay together, as citizens emeritus and do some constructive work that would be track two kind of effort. And there’s plenty of track two stuff out there that gets done and can help diplomacy and help with relationships. And Xie Zhenhua and I are genuinely good friends, and he is very experienced and very knowledgeable, and I hope we can work together to try to be helpful as we go forward.
