Installing the senior statesman into the newly created position gives it gravitas at a time when U.S. credibility abroad on global warming and other issues has waned under President Trump.
The move also marks the first time the National Security Council, the main White House body for setting foreign policy, will include someone dedicated to climate change.
Part of the task facing Kerry next year is a tall one: making sure the Paris climate agreement he helped broker bears fruit.
“The work we began with the Paris Agreement is far from done,” Kerry tweeted Monday. “I’m returning to government to get America back on track to address the biggest challenge of this generation and those that will follow.”
Under that 2015 accord, nearly 200 nations agreed to set their own nonbinding targets for cutting emissions to keep global warming to manageable levels. The success of the agreement relies on how well U.S. diplomats such as Kerry can wield soft power to convince China, India and other nations to curtail emissions as they grow their economies.
Undermining that mission is the Trump administration’s rollback of rules meant to help the United States hit its own emissions goals. Trump officially withdrew the country from the agreement on Nov. 4, the day after the election, although Biden has promised to reenter the agreement on “day one” in office.
Kerry will be charged with convincing global leaders the United States is serious about addressing global warming, even as Republican administrations tend to undo the climate work of Democratic ones.
Over the weekend, Trump took a final potshot at the Paris climate accord during a virtual Group of 20 summit. The agreement, he said in a speech, “was not designed to save the environment; it was designed to kill the American economy.”
The Kerry pick pleased most people across the Democrats’ political spectrum.
In the Democratic presidential primary, Kerry went to bat for Biden during the Iowa caucuses when his candidacy was flagging. But earlier this year, Kerry sought to mend fences with the more progressive members of the Democratic Party by co-chairing a climate task force with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)
The Biden campaign set up that panel to make policy recommendations and bring supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) into the fold after Biden secured the Democratic nomination. Biden has not embraced the Green New Deal pushed by Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives, but his climate proposal contains some of its key planks.
Catherine Coleman Flowers, an environmental activist in Montgomery, Ala., and Sanders surrogate on the panel, said Kerry helped smooth over disagreements during Zoom meetings involving nuclear energy and other issues.
“He was quite the diplomat in terms of trying to make sure that all sides were represented and that we could reach compromises that we could all live with,” she said. “He had a good understanding of the climate crisis.”
Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the youth-led environmental group the Sunrise Movement who also served on the task force, called the Kerry pick an “encouraging sign,” but added that a position of similar stature needs to be set up for domestic climate policy.
“What good is it to engage in diplomacy abroad if we’re not doing everything we can at home?” said Prakash, whose group had endorsed Sanders.
In response to her call for a high-level domestic climate official, Biden’s incoming chief of staff, Ron Klain, tweeted: “Stay tuned!!”
“This official would focus on how to maximize Biden’s executive authority, while looking for legislative opportunities as well,” my colleagues Brady Dennis, Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin report after talking to two individuals briefed on the transition’s plans. “Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) is under consideration but the team is also looking at current members of Congress and others for the job, according to one of these individuals.”
For Kerry, the position is a capstone to a career focused on climate change.
As a senator from Massachusetts, Kerry unsuccessfully pushed to pass a major climate bill during President Barack Obama’s first two years in office. Later during Obama’s term, in 2013, he was put in charge of the State Department, where he spearhead negotiations that led to the Paris accord.
And while out of office last year, he launched a project called World War Zero, which brought together Hollywood stars, Washington policymakers and others to push for more aggressive climate action.
Power plays
General Motors will no longer back Trump’s efforts to stop California’s emissions rules.
In another sign of the shifting political winds, GM chief executive Mary Barra announced it would withdraw from litigation backing the Trump administration’s effort to to stop California from setting its own tougher emissions standards, our colleagues Hannah Denham and Juliet Eilperin report.
The automaker, which announced last week plans to bring 30 new electric vehicles to market by 2025, said the decision was inspired by Biden’s plan to promote electric vehicle adoption.
“We are confident that the Biden Administration, California, and the U.S. auto industry, which supports 10.3 million jobs, can collaboratively find the pathway that will deliver an all-electric future,” Barra wrote in a letter to environmental leaders.
GM is one of several carmakers lobbying Washington to boost tax breaks for those who purchase electric vehicles.
Tom Udall says Biden will target Trump’s Arctic drilling push on Day 1.
The Senate Democrat from New Mexico, who will retire from the Senate early next year, is a prime contender to lead the Interior Department under Biden. Udall told Reuters that he expects the Trump administration’s plan to sell oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge may not stand up to scrutiny in the courts.
“I would expect that there would be real scrutiny and analysis of these last-minute kinds of deals that are being done,” Udall told Reuters. “That’s an issue that needs to be looked at on Day One.”
Thermometer
Dozens of oil and gas companies agree to report methane emissions.
A group of 62 mostly European oil and gas companies, including large companies such as Shell and BP, agreed to report emissions from methane, a potent greenhouse gas, to the Oil & Gas Methane Partnership, a group led by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the European Commission and the Environmental Defense Fund, the Hill reports.
The agreement “also sets a sectorwide goal of reducing methane emissions by 45 percent from 2015 levels by 2025 and either at least a 60 percent reduction by 2030 or alternatively reaching near-zero emission intensity for early parts of the process known as upstream production,” the Hill writes.
Coronavirus shutdowns did not result in a significant decline in CO2 levels, according to the United Nations.
The World Meteorological Organization, the U.N. weather agency, said on Monday that the industrial slowdown triggered by the coronavirus pandemic decreased greenhouse gas emissions but did not result in reductions in record levels of CO2 levels in the atmosphere, beyond normal year to year fluctuations, the Associated Press reports.
“The lockdown-related fall in emissions is just a tiny blip on the long-term graph. We need a sustained flattening of the curve,” World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said Monday. “The covid-19 pandemic is not a solution for climate change.”
