Kerry: ‘Big, Powerful Economic Interests’ Will Be ‘Critical’ on Climate with Things Like ESG

On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN International’s “Amanpour,” Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry stated that “big, powerful economic interests” will play a crucial role in fighting climate change and business will play an “absolutely critical” role, and you see this with things like ESG.

Host Christiane Amanpour said that while there are entrepreneurs and personal action on climate, “we’re told over and over again that that is not enough, it’s big governments, important governments, small governments who have to actually do it to make it stick.”

Kerry responded, “Well, it’s not just big governments, Christiane, it’s big, powerful economic interests. Where you have governments controlling and providing incentives, you can make a lot happen. But the private sector will play an absolutely critical role here. In fact, I think, in many ways, it’s going to be the private sector moving on these new technologies and also living up to its corporate stakeholder responsibility. You have CEOs all around the world now, in the context of their boardrooms and the ESG requirements that they’re trying to live up to who are making commitments about getting to net zero by 2050 or by 2030, doing things that would’ve been unheard of before. We need greater finance on the table to help less developed countries be able to transition to clean energy. And we need it to be able to help the rest of the world be able to reduce the emissions and deploy the renewables and the alternative forms of energy.”

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