WASHINGTON (AP) — John Kerry, the U.S. particular envoy on local weather, is stepping down from the Biden administration within the coming weeks, in accordance with two individuals acquainted with his plans.
Kerry, a longtime senator and secretary of state, was tapped shortly after Joe Biden’s November 2020 election to tackle the brand new position created particularly to battle local weather change on behalf of the administration on the worldwide stage.
Kerry’s departure plans had been first reported Saturday by Axios.
Kerry was one of many main drafters of the 2015 Paris local weather accords and got here into the position with important expertise overseas, as secretary of state throughout the Obama administration and from practically three many years as a member of the Senate International Relations Committee. Biden’s choice to faucet Kerry for the submit was seen as a technique the incoming president was making good on his marketing campaign pledge to battle climate change in a extra forceful and visual method than in earlier administrations.
“The local weather disaster is a common menace to humankind and all of us have a accountability to take care of it as quickly as we will,” Kerry mentioned in a go to to Beijing final summer season, when he met with Vice President Han Zheng on local weather issues.
At worldwide local weather summits, Kerry all the time saved a breakneck tempo, going from one assembly to a different, with world leaders, main enterprise figures and scientists, all interspersed with one press convention after one other — to share what he simply discovered, announce an initiative, or say just a few phrases as civil teams introduced their very own plans to assist fight local weather change, thus lending his credibility and weight.
Within the span an hour, at one assembly Kerry would speak intimately in regards to the want for oil firms to drastically cut back methane, a robust greenhouse gasoline, then go to a different gathering and element his newest concept to assist pay for inexperienced vitality transition in creating international locations after which, some minutes later, go into an extended rationalization of unlawful fishing world wide whereas attending an occasion with leaders of Pacific Island nations.
“John Kerry’s tireless work to ship world progress on the local weather disaster has been heroic,” former Vice President Al Gore, who has targeted totally on local weather in his post-public workplace life, mentioned in an announcement Saturday. “He has approached this problem with daring imaginative and prescient, resolute dedication, and the urgency that this disaster calls for. For that the U.S. and the entire world owe him an enormous debt of gratitude.”
Whereas his gravitas has made him a central local weather determine world wide, Kerry additionally has robust critics who argue America’s local weather insurance policies don’t quantity to management in combating world warming. The Inflation Discount Act, the most important local weather regulation in U.S. historical past, is pumping billions of {dollars} into renewable energies. However many aspects of the regulation emphasize home manufacturing, thus main different nations to complain that the regulation is protectionist and detrimental to their very own inexperienced industries.
And for years, the USA opposed the creation of a “loss and harm” that might see wealthy nations contribute billions of {dollars} to assist creating international locations, typically hit exhausting by excessive climate occasions pushed by local weather change. Throughout COP27 in Egypt in 2022, the fund was accepted, because the U.S. and different wealthy international locations relented and supported it. Nevertheless, Kerry is all the time fast to say the fund just isn’t about “reparations” or “compensation,” and thus far the U.S. has promised solely modest funding for it.
Kerry represented Massachusetts for 28 years within the Senate and was additionally the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004.
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Related Press author Peter Prengaman in North Creek, New York, and AP Science Author Seth Borenstein contributed to this report.
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