The only way of preventing global warming is “money, money, money”, former failed presidential contender John Kerry said at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos on Tuesday.
US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry said that the world is not acting with enough urgency to “save the world” and prevent what he calls a climate crisis from occurring. The 79-year-old Democrat opened his remarks by questioning how “allegedly wise adult human” such as CEOs and Senators could, as he put it, “ignore our science and want to ignore mathematics and want to ignore physics and somehow cannot bring themselves to do what we need to do.”
The billionaire politician, who married into the wealthy Heinz family, heaped praise on those who attended the meeting in the Swiss ski resort town, saying how “extraordinary that we select human beings… are able to sit in a room and come together and actually talk about saving the planet.”
“I mean it’s so almost extraterrestrial to think about quote ‘saving the planet’. If you said that to most people, they think you’re just a crazy tree-hugging Lefty liberal do-good… but really that’s where we are.”
But despite his apparent high estimation of the WEF attendees, Mr Kerry said that the only way to prevent the Earth from warming by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) will be huge investment from governments and the private sector.
“So how do we get there well the lesson I’ve learned in the last years and I learned it as Secretary and I’ve learned it since, reinforced in spades is money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money. I’m sorry to say that, I mean yes technology, yes exciting new initiatives, yes organising winning races politically…but we have to go further.”
“We don’t have time folks to be cobbling together bespoke deals here, there and everywhere. We have to do it on a massive basis and the key to that one is philanthropy. It’s not the only key, we need governments to put Federal public money into it,” Kerry urged.
While admitting that previous United Nations climate change summits in Glasgow and Sharm El Sheikh had come up short in his estimation, the Biden administration’s top man on the climate said that he believes it is possible to limit potential warming to 1.5°C, the world will need a World War II-style effort.
“We knew that in order to win the war… we had to organise ourselves to take control of the skies and take control of the seas and be able to smash the battlements,” he said.
However, in what has become something of a grim running gag, the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos has yet again faced charges of “hypocrisy” given that over a thousand private jets reportedly descended upon the Swiss village to attend the meeting.
It has been estimated that the emissions from the private jets at last year’s meeting was equivalent to running 350,000 average cars per week.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka