The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) ran an article noting that despite John Kerry’s failure as President Joe Biden’s climate envoy to get China to curb its coal use in order to save the world from climate change, Kerry is now being brought over to Biden’s reelection campaign. If Kerry does as good a job with Biden’s campaign as he did in changing the course of the world’s fossil fuel use, Biden’s reelection efforts are in trouble. The WSJ is right, Kerry failed in his biggest mission as the U.S. climate czar, curbing greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries, especially China.
Describing Kerry’s lack of success, the WSJ wrote:
For three years Mr. Kerry has been preoccupied with getting China to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. But excluding emissions from land use and forestry, China’s emissions rose 13% between 2015 and 2023, according to Climate Action Tracker estimates. U.S. emissions fell by some 9% over the same period.
You can’t say Mr. Kerry hasn’t tried to persuade China, including the use of green flattery. “China has produced more renewable energy, more solar and wind than any other country,” he said last year.
But China’s CO2 emissions have still soared as demand for electricity surged. In 2022 China accounted for 53% of the world’s coal generation, the Ember think tank says, and new permits for coal power plants in 2022 reached “the highest level since 2015.” That’s the year Beijing signed the Paris climate accord Mr. Kerry negotiated, promising to reduce its emissions starting in 2030.
China also expanded it coal mining, despite Kerry’s efforts, setting a new record for production in 2023.
In September 2023, Kerry’s counterpart, Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said, “It is unrealistic to completely phase out fossil fuel energy,” echoing statement made by China’s President Xi Jinping 2022 that the country’s carbon dioxide policies, “can’t be detached from reality.”
Looking at some of those realities, one can see that regardless of what one believes about humanity’s role (or lack thereof) in climate change. Kerry’s climate outreach to China and elsewhere was largely an expensive fool’s errand.
An article on Turning Point USA points out that the salary for Kerry’s small staff cost U.S. taxpayers $4.3 million each year, with all but one of the 27 employees with the office of Special Presidential Envoy for Climate making more than $100,000 per year. This doesn’t include the costs of office space and equipment, travel, and other associated costs with running Kerry’s independent office. I say independent because Kerry’s position was created by President Biden, reporting only to him. Despite being charged with negotiating international climate agreements, Kerry’s office was outside the normal chain of command. It was not part of the State Department, and Kerry did not report to the Secretary of State.
All that money bought no climate progress. During Kerry’s time as Special Climate Envoy, coal use set new records. In 2023, the International Energy Agency reported:
“The demand for coal is seen rising 1.4 percent in 2023, surpassing 8.5 billion tonnes for the first time as usage in India is expected to grow 8 percent and that in China up 5 percent due to rising electricity demand and weak hydropower output, IEA said in a report released on Friday,” writes Al Jazeera, reporting io the IEA’s findings.
Indeed, data from Statista shows that the capacity of the coal plants announced, permitted, and under construction have risen each year since Kerry was on the job, reversing a declining trend global trend in coal power construction that existed under the Trump administration.
To be fair, John Kerry does not run China, India, or any of the other developing countries where coal use for electric power generation and industrial uses is rising, but his main job was to persuade the leaders of those countries to shift to alternative, less reliable, more expensive forms of energy, as Western Europe and the United States are largely doing. In that task, he abjectly failed. And the reason for the failure is clear, the Biden administration with Kerry as its point man, put climate pipe dreams above economic realities of the developing world.
The result was aptly summed up by the WSJ, writing, “Mr. Kerry’s problem has been a failure to recognize reality, which is typical of America’s climate lobby.”
Kerry is a total idiot, what’s he going to use as leverage for not expanding coal! Higher prices, less reliable energy and basically nothing! These alternate forms of energy as it turns are more polluting than burning coal with cleaner burning technologies! They are also more expensive if subsidies are not applied! Politicians are out for their own personal benefit and good give a rip about the cost or the benefits! Kerry goes around in private jets and says we ought to live with minimal impact to the climate! Who does he think he is besides Biden’s stooge on the climate, a climate marshal going around saying he’s going to save the planet! LOL!