Kerry: Even Glasgow, Sharm el-Sheikh Climate Agreements Are ‘Not Acceptable’

On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry stated that even the global climate agreements reached at the United Nations meetings at Glasgow and Sharm el-Sheikh are “not acceptable” because even if everyone met the provisions of those two agreements, there would still be too much of a global temperature rise.

Kerry said, “Everybody knows that the Inflation Reduction Act and the open efforts that are currently on the table represent about a 41, 42% reduction in emissions. That’s accurate. But there are already programs being initiated…where the president, by executive order, is initiating steps through the EPA and otherwise that make up the difference to the 50 to 52%. And so, we believe very strongly that we will meet the goals, even though, right now, the whole world is not meeting the goal. We’re currently headed towards about 2.5 degrees, not keeping the temperature of the planet rising at the 1.5 limit. And even if we did everything that has been promised in Glasgow and in Sharm el-Sheikh, at the two meetings of the U.N., even if everything were done there, we would still be at 1.7 or 1.8 degrees of warming. That’s not acceptable.”

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