U.S. special presidential envoy for climate John Kerry told the “Washington Post Live” podcast that even if both the United States of America and China had zero greenhouse gas emissions, it would not solve the climate crisis.
Kerry said, “The fact is that what President Biden is doing tomorrow is reconvening what we used to call and what we started with President Obama was the Major Economies Forum. It happens to also obviously contain large emitter nations. And so, it is critical because 20 nations are the equivalent of 81 percent of all the emissions on the planet, and we need those 20, above all, to step up.
Addressing opinions writer Jonathan Capehart, Kerry continued, “But the challenge is this, Jonathan. The United States could go to zero tomorrow. I mean, we can’t, but if you figuratively speaking, could go to zero, we’d still have a problem. The world would still have a problem. If China went to zero tomorrow with the United States, we’d still have a problem. So, every country has to come to the table. This is the single biggest multilateral, global negotiation that the world has ever needed, and the stakes could not be higher because, I mean, we hear people talk about this being existential. For many people on the planet, it already is.”
He added, “But we’re not behaving internationally like it is, in fact, an existential challenge. We even have deniers still in the United States. We’re the one nation that has a lot of deniers, and a lot of money has been spent in our country to create that doubt and the possibility of denial. We need to get on track based on science, based on facts, based on truth, and that’s part of what this climate summit that President Biden is hosting is all about.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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