Kerry criticized Donald Trump for “three lost years” with climate change.
The United States formally returned to the Paris climate deal on Friday, 30 days after President Joe Biden signed the mechanism to re-enter the historic deal.
While climate advocates applauded the decision, Biden’s special presidential envoy on climate change, John Kerry, raised the alarm about the need for urgent and ambitious action.
Kerry attacked former President Donald Trump, blaming his government for having been “inexplicably absent for four years”.
“Many of us think the failure of this company could be in one word. The word was Trump,” he said Friday morning to members of America Is All In, a coalition of states, cities, private companies and other groups. led by Mike Bloomberg to keep the U.S. on track to meet its Paris climate goals.
The withdrawal from the US lasted just over 100 days. Although Trump announced that he would exit the non-binding agreement in June 2017, that withdrawal would not take effect until November 4, 2020, the day after the U.S. presidential election. But his government dismantled a number of environmental protections during his tenure, including protections for drinking water and air and fuel efficiency standards.
At the Munich Security Conference on Friday, Kerry lamented that the world “is not close to where we need to be” in part because the United States was not leading.
“Three years later, three years lost,” he said. “Around 2030 is the date when we have to put the world on the right track now, in order to limit warming to that level of 1.5 [degrees Celsius]. So we are absolutely, clearly, without a doubt within the decisive decade … it is what people will do in the next 10 years that matters. “
These warnings come at a time when world leaders urge the Biden government to implement an ambitious agenda to reduce America’s emissions, which commit about 13% of the world total.
Kerry has not announced any new measures as the government continues to review its climate policies. But the former secretary of state and presidential candidate pointed to Biden’s plan for a Leaders’ Climate Summit on Earth Day, as well as COP26, the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in November this year.
Strictly speaking, he told conference participants that climate change is a “threat multiplier” that already causes mass displacement and migration, conflicts and humanitarian crises.
“When tensions are already high somewhere and resources are increasingly scarce, the embers of the conflict simply burn more intensely,” he said. “And when farmers are no longer able to live because the climate is so extreme and unpredictable, they become increasingly desperate. Many, according to some studies, hundreds of millions, will be forced to leave their homes … if not well managed, it can literally begin to undermine countries, homes, peace and stability. “
In fact, Kerry linked the Texas crisis to climate change, saying, “This week in the state of Texas, we saw an unprecedented extreme cold related to the climate because the polar vortex penetrates further south because of the weakening of the related jet stream to the heating. “
This link between climate change and cold weather is not definitive, but scientists say climate change may be making hot and cold seasons more extreme.
Not all countries will be invited to Biden’s Earth Day summit, Kerry confirmed, but it will include many developing countries like Bangladesh and Pacific states like Palau, which are already tackling the climate crisis in tangible ways. The 17 largest economies in the world and the largest emitting countries must take note “of the plight of the people who are the victims,” said Kerry.
He added, “There is simply no pretense at this point. Failure is not really an option if we hope to pass the Earth in the form it needs to be for future generations.”