As the 29th United Nations climate change conference (COP29) concluded, former Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry shared his concerns and optimism on the climate crisis at a recent John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum. Kerry discussed the future of climate action, especially under the next Trump administration, with Setti Warren, director of the Institute of Politics, and adjunct lecturer in public policy
“I think, personally, we're on the brink of needing to declare a climate emergency, which is what we really have,” Kerry said following a recap of recent UN climate gatherings. “And we need to get people to behave as if this really is a major transitional challenge to the whole planet, to everybody.”
He emphasized the global importance of the conferences, which have been held all over the world and are formally known as meetings of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change or COP. This year’s COP29 was held in Baku, Azerbaijan.
“Nobody lives as an island in this process, on this planet,” he said. “And no one country has enough money to deal with the climate crisis.”
And while political shifts are happening all over the world, Kerry said he firmly believes science should lead the way. “Everything I've ever done and advocated for in this is based on science. No politics. There's no liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican electrons or molecules.”
Warren, noting a room full of future policymakers, asked what could be done now to push climate action to top of voting issues.
“Needs people feel translate into votes on election day,” Kerry said. “We have the challenge of getting people to understand that the economics of climate work favors people who are feeling the pinch of inflation.”
He also encouraged people to remember that climate efforts are moving forward.
“In Donald Trump’s first term when he pulled out of the Paris Agreement, a thousand mayors in the United States stood up and said, we're not pulling out,” added Kerry. "Thirty-seven governors in our country, Republican and Democrat alike, enforced the law with respect to the deployment of energy because they operate under what's called renewable portfolio laws.”
“We have the challenge of getting people to understand that the economics of climate work favors people who are feeling the pinch of inflation.”
At the end of Trump's first term, Kerry said, 75% of the new electricity in the United States of America was renewable even after Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement.
And Kerry is convinced that success in the marketplace will move the issue forward.
“The marketplace has made its decision,” he said. “I assure you that when Donald Trump takes the oath of office on January 20th, no CEO, in this country, of an automobile company, after spending billions of dollars retooling their plants, is going to suddenly go back to internal combustion engine cars.”
He also noted that Trump is in favor of America being first in the delivery of energy. "I would assume, because the extraction principles of geothermal are very similar to the extraction of oil and gas, that the oil and gas companies—and I know this from talking to them—want to move into geothermal. And that’s great. 80% of the workers today in geothermal have come from the oil and gas industry. So that's the future, the conversion.”
All we need to do, he said, is to show people how bright the future looks after this conversion.
Kerry said his own optimism comes from the successes he has witnessed in his long career as lieutenant governor for Massachusetts and 28 years as a U.S. senator. He recalled the creation of Earth Day in the 1970s, and demonstrations like igniting the polluted Cuyahoga River in Ohio on fire that helped convince then-President Nixon that threats to the environment were a voting issue.
“In the next months leading into 1972, [the United States] passed a Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act, the Endangered Species Act, and we created the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States of America, which we didn't have,” said Kerry.
In the 1980s, as lieutenant governor, Kerry worked through the acid rain crisis, when rainwater was polluted by unhealthy levels of acidity. “I became known as the 'acid rain king' and we created a remedial plan with the governors,” he said. “How many of you have talked about or thought about or heard about acid rain in the last couple of years?” he asked.
The complete Forum discussion is available through the Institute of Politics YouTube channel.
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Photographs by Martha Stewart