John Kerry: A Climate Change True Believer

You would think that the Secretary of State’s job would be protecting America’s interests first, but by picking John Kerry, a staunch believer in climate change, Barack Obama has made it clear that he is an internationalist first and an American somewhere way down the ladder. 

Kerry cosponsored a bill with Joe Lieberman that dealt with climate change, but it died in the Senate. He once flew all the way to Bali, Indonesia, to attend a UN meeting on the subject for a few hours.

Others see him as a climate-change hero; Phil Schiliro, the former legislative director for Obama, said, “Obviously, he has enormous credibility. I think that’s going to help. Combine that with the fact that the president has such a commitment to the issue, and it sends a good signal.”

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) added, “It goes without saying that you have truly been a world leader on one of the most consequential issues of our time: climate change. It heartens me to know that someone with your commitment to the issue will be our voice to the world.”

Kerry is playing his cards close to the vest for now on specific plans; questioned by Barbara Boxer about his plans for the Keystone Pipeline, Kerry only offered this:    

There is a statutory process with respect to the review that falls to the State Department and elsewhere and that is currently ongoing. I’ve already checked into it. It’s under way. It will not be long before it comes across my desk and at that time, I’ll make the appropriate judgments about it.

Translation: we’ll see if Obama can sell the public on putting the kibosh on it, if he can’t I’ll stamp it approved.

Yet Kerry couldn’t help himself when GOP lawmakers asked him about climate change, blurting out:

The solution to climate change is energy policy. And the opportunities of energy policy so vastly outweigh the downsides that you’re expressing concerns about. And I will spend a lot of time trying to persuade my colleagues about this. You want to do business and do it well in America, we gotta get into the energy race. … I’ll be a passionate advocate, but not based on ideology, based on fact, based on science. This $6 trillion market is worth millions of American jobs and we better go get it.

First of all, the way leftists see climate change is fiction. Second, how much money has Barack Obama wasted on “green” companies?

Yvo de Boer, the former top U.N. climate official, approved of the choice of Kerry:

So far, the international engagement on climate has been driven very strongly from the White House. But that has not been matched as strongly so far through a direct engagement of the secretary of state. Obviously climate is an environmental issue, but it’s also very much an economic and diplomatic issue, and I feel it’s really important that there is strong engagement from the State Department and the secretary of state, given the fact that the challenge we face is as much a diplomatic one as it is an economic and environmental one.

So the U.N. approves of Kerry. Need we say anything more?