WASHINGTON — Time was running out and U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry knew it. International climate talks in mid-December were stuck with no agreement to phase out oil, gas and coal, fossil fuels that are the root cause of global warming.
The United Nations sponsored conference official end date, a day after Kerry’s 80th birthday, was fast approaching. What’s more, Kerry’s Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, who helped craft past deals with him, announced that he was retiring. Opportunity could be slipping away at the summit known as COP28, being held in Dubai.
“It made me bear down and get to a lot more meetings, one-on-one and otherwise, and frankly dragooned a few other people into the effort to persuade and make the difference,” Kerry recalled during a recent interview with The Associated Press, given ahead of his retirement this week.
In the heat of negotiations, the energy minister of Saudi Arabia, an oil-rich nation that has long opposed diplomatic attempts to limit fossil fuels, agreed on language about “transitioning away” from the carbon-belching energy supplies.
“Don’t get excited yet,” Kerry recalled telling himself. He had seen victories slip away at the last moment before.
This time it didn’t. Instead, the deal struck turned out to be what Kerry now calls the high point of the world’s 30-year effort to curb ever-worseningclimate change. All in just 48 hours.
“This was a major breakthrough,” Kerry said, one that made him ready to leave his climate diplomacy job after three years. In January, Kerry announced plans to step down and Wednesday will be his last in office.
Sitting in his U.S. State Department office with cavernous ceilings, wood paneled walls festooned with modern art and photographs, Kerry reflected on his years leading America’s efforts to combat climate change and detailed why he believed the Dubai agreement was so important.
In the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, which Kerry, at the time secretary of state, signed with a granddaughter on his lap, nations were only required to enact plans they wrote up. That allowed countries like China to leave out major things, like the need to reduce emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
“We now have an agreement globally that we have to transition away from fossil fuel, that we have to do it with urgency, immediately in this decade, beginning now, and that we have to do it by including all greenhouse gases,” said Kerry.
Still, not everyone is enamored with international climate efforts so far. “Overblown,” said climate negotiations historian Joanna Depledge, referring to Kerry’s assessment of Dubai as the high point of climate diplomacy.
“Have you seen oil and gas prices shift in response to the adoption of the Dubai Consensus?” Depledge of the University of Cambridge in England said in an email. “No, nor have I. We are making incremental progress. That’s great. But a whole new track? No.”
Depledge said Kerry will be remembered as “a force for good in the negotiations,” turning the page on low points, such as previous U.S. administrations pulling out — twice — from international climate agreements.
Kerry said the second time the U.S. pulled out of an agreement, when former President Donald Trump removed America from the Paris accord soon after taking office in 2017, the country’s reputation was damaged, as were international efforts to fight climate change. But today Kerry said he assures leaders of other countries that even if a candidate like Trump, who is running for re-election, were to win, “no one person can reverse what the world is doing now.”
“Why? Because the marketplace writ large all around the world, presidents, prime ministers, monarchs, kings, leaders of countries have all decided they’re moving in this direction, some at a different pace. But they are moving,” Kerry said. It’s “a vast change in the marketplace,” he added.
Despite stepping down as America’s top climate negotiator, Kerry won’t completely leave the climate scene. He plans to attend the next round of negotiations later this year in Baku, Azerbaijan, though White House senior adviser John Podesta will be leading the U.S. delegation.
Kerry said he hopes to shift from making deals to making them work.
Putting into action plans to reduce the use of fossil fuels and increase renewable energies is key and won’t be done so much by the public sector, where Kerry has spent nearly half a century, but instead by the private sector, he said.
The world needs to spend $2 trillion to $5 trillion a year combatting climate change in various ways. However, finding that amount of money won’t be easy.
