Our satellites will see what China is doing on climate change, says John Kerry

Joe Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry says the US is ready to get tough on China in meeting climate-change goals.

US climate John Kerry speaks during a press briefing at the White House last Thursday. Picture: Brendan Smialowski / AFP

John Kerry says he got his passion for the environment from his mother. When he returned from Vietnam with a chestful of medals and a heart full of anger, his first activism was inspired by her recycling campaign, even before the anti-war protests that he is much better known for.

Rosemary Forbes Kerry, a nurse who fled her native Paris to the US to escape the Nazis, kept out of the limelight when her son’s political career took off but remained a lifelong ecologist who tended a Massachusetts butterfly garden and led tours of a wildlife refuge.

“I came back from Vietnam and the first thing I got involved in was Earth Day 1970 – the first Earth Day,” he says on his 51st Earth Day, striding from the White House to his new office in the familiar surroundings of the US State Department.

“I was an organiser in Massachusetts and I spoke at schools on Earth Day itself – and then we were all involved in the election of 1970 when we targeted the worst 12 congressmen in their voting records on the environment and we defeated seven of them. So the environment became a voting issue in 1970 – and then I opposed the war, after we had done that election.”

Mr Kerry received three Purple Hearts for being wounded in action and the war propelled him to national recognition when he asked congress: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” But the environment was always there and, at the age of 77, he finds himself on the front line again.

“I’m not fanatical about it, but I am tenacious,” he says, his enthusiasm confounding the aloof manner that has sometimes led people to consider him rather detached.

“The United States of America does not have a grid, we can’t send energy from one part of the country to the other – it’s absurd in 2021! In every one of the things we want to do – building our grid, converting our vehicles, retrofitting our buildings, we’ve got a massive offshore wind proposal – there are a lot of jobs, you can’t get them done without people working.”

Joe Biden and Xi Jinping in 2011.

It was Joe Biden’s idea to have an international climate envoy, Mr Kerry says. He did not think twice about accepting a role that would test the stamina of a younger man.

“He asked me during the summer to chair a working group for the campaign to try to harmonise the Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden supporters on a major climate initiative,” Mr Kerry says. “Having won he wanted to follow through and he asked me if I’d take it on.”

Mr Kerry has impressive credentials. He is well known internationally, having been the Democratic candidate for president in 2004 and served as a senator for Massachusetts from 1985 to 2013. He attended the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992.

“George Bush was president and he signed the climate agreement [the UN convention that led to Kyoto and Paris] – it was a different world,” he says, reflecting on how the climate, like everything else in Washington, has become mired in partisan politics.

As secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 he signed the Paris agreement and was the first holder of his office to visit Antarctica, spending the night at a US research station.

“I have children and grandchildren and I’m seized by the seriousness of this moment if we don’t get the job done – we’re already seeing massive feedback loops that tell us that things are getting out of control,” he says.

His family were supportive about him taking the job, he says, despite already “having put up with a lot of c-r-a-p on behalf of my journeys”.

A green thread runs through his home life. He first met his wife, Teresa Heinz, at an Earth Day event in Washington in 1990. They were introduced by her husband at the time, John Heinz, a Republican senator for Pennsylvania and heir to the food company. He died in an air crash the following year.

Mr Kerry was divorced in 1988 from his first wife, Julia Thorne, an environmental activist and author with whom he has two daughters. Ms Heinz, who speaks five languages, met Mr Kerry again when she was working as a translator at the 1992 Rio conference. A year later they began dating and they married in 1995. She chairs the Heinz Endowments, which awards $US60 million ($77.5m) a year to non-profit groups with the goal of “advancing a sustainable future for our community and planet”.

Mr Kerry was at the White House on Thursday as a host of Mr Biden’s climate summit, which garnered significant pledges on emission reductions, notably from Canada and Japan, not to mention new UK and EU goals. He is slightly affronted by the suggestion that the US stole Britain’s thunder by pre-empting the Cop26 conference in Glasgow in November.

“Hell no! We have so far to go,” he says. “We have a lot of ambition between now and Glasgow. We wanted to be a building block. We are determined to be as helpful as possible to make Glasgow a success. I personally view Glasgow as the last best opportunity to get the world back on track. We have a lot of folks to convince to go a lot faster.”

Specific pledges were notably absent from China and Russia, the world’s first and fourth largest CO2 emitters. They are among Mr Kerry’s chief targets for progress by Glasgow.

His foray this month to Beijing, however, drew some criticism back home after a rather empty joint statement. The Wall Street Journal lambasted him for a “climate kowtow” in a scathing editorial that quoted Le Yucheng, deputy foreign minister, as saying: “Some countries are asking China to do more on climate change. I am afraid this is not very realistic.”

Mr Kerry rejects accusations of naivety. “It was good that they linked coal to the 1.5C [goal of limiting global temperature rises] ... they said they would reduce coal but obviously the question is when and how much,” he says.

“There are serious questions that have to be answered and we are seeking clarification. There’s nothing naive. We learnt very long ago that we don’t take people at face value except our very closest friends. What we’ll do here is verify. We have massive capacity with satellites to know exactly what’s being produced where – and that will be true for all major corporations with major supply chains, we’ll know what they’re doing.

“We know a lot about the Chinese coal structure, we’ve had long discussions about it and now we have to have some very direct conversations about where they are actually headed versus the rhetoric. But there’s no naivety, trust me.”

Mr Kerry confirms that he is planning a trip to Russia. “I have been invited and at the right moment I am prepared to go,” he says. “Now that the summit is behind us we will have a little bit more time for the hard diplomacy. We’ve been on a 100-day sprint – on January 19 we were nowhere, no office, no team – and now we’ve had a summit at which more than 50 per cent of the world is on track to hit 1.5C with their pledges and we have seen people raise ambition. The theory of Glasgow is to raise ambition.”

Several leaders seemed to make a point at the summit that their pledges were reliable, perhaps highlighting a contrast with the US and its about-turn from Trump-era climate scepticism to Biden climate activism. Can the world rely on America?

“Well, let me tell you why I don’t believe people should worry about that,” Mr Kerry says. “The reason is the market transformation that is already under way. We just had six banks in the United States declare that over the next 10 years they’re going to be putting collectively $US4.16 trillion into climate investment, as a floor. If you’re four years into the process, no politician is going to individually turn that market around.

“That will have its own momentum built on economic benefits, not some political decision. There’s no way these businesses are deciding to do this just because government is talking about dealing with climate issues. They’re doing it because they see enormous economic opportunity. There’s money to be made and that’s why I don’t think you’re going to see a politician change it. Once it’s moving, it’s moving.”

He added: “By the way, during the time that Donald Trump was out of the deal [Paris] it didn’t shut down the United States. It hurt momentum, it hurt credibility but 37 [state] governors and the District of Columbia the next day all stood up and announced, ‘We’re still in.’ A movement was created and over 1000 mayors, every major city in America, said, ‘We’re still in.’ America has continued cutting because of the efforts of the sub-national folks. So even with Trump, he didn’t shut it down.”

The Biden administration wants to convince Americans – and the world – that spending big on greening the country will actually create millions of jobs. Mr Kerry also walks the walk in his life. He drives an electric car, has replaced all incandescent bulbs and has built a “solar field” at his Massachusetts home.

While his well-heeled lifestyle sets him apart from most, Mr Kerry insists that his green vision has never been exclusive.

“I don’t think everybody has to make dramatic lifestyle shifts,” he says. “There is a lot of research going on into diet for cattle – there are plenty of ways to deal with methane [left-wing Democrats have been mocked for wanting to get rid of ‘farting cows’].

“I love vegetarian but I also eat fish, I eat meat. I don’t think anybody has to, quote, sacrifice, I think you can have your quality of life but you can have a green quality of life that’s just better. Cleaner air is better, cleaner water is better. Getting rid of pollution is better.”

The Times