Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry is resigning soon to help President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, leaving behind a checkered record as the Biden administration’s climate czar.
Biden appointed Kerry to his post in the State Department in November 2020, giving him a seat on the National Security Council and a key role in advancing the administration’s massive climate agenda, particularly in coordinating with foreign diplomats to secure international cooperation on climate policies.
Kerry helped negotiate several high-profile climate agreements, but the ultimate success of those deals lies in the hands of other countries, including China, a reality that has made Kerry the subject of wide criticism.
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“I know the President appreciated everything that he was able to do in the past three years,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last week regarding Kerry and his tenure in the Biden administration. “You know, he was able to deliver — with the leadership, obviously, of this president — the most ambitious climate agenda in history — when you think about restoring America’s leadership on climate around the world, implementing the largest investment in climate ever, putting us on track to cut emissions in half by 2030 … But our work, the work that he started, the work is going to continue. The work to address the climate crisis will continue.”
The White House had no further comment or statement to add to Jean-Pierre’s remarks about Kerry and his achievements while working for the Biden administration, a spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Climate diplomacy
Kerry attended each of the United Nations’ (U.N.) climate conferences during his tenure in the Biden administration, held in Scotland, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). He also attended the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual confab in Davos, Switzerland, in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
After the 2021 and 2022 trips to the U.N.’s climate summits, the State Department failed to properly record the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the agency’s official travel as required by a 2021 executive order. During 2023’s edition, held in the UAE and run by an Emirati energy executive, internal corporate documents revealed that two major Emirati energy companies viewed Kerry as a key international official to leverage in order to improve its financial prospects in the future.
Read: China Tells U.S. To Stay In Its Own Lane On Climate After John Kerry’s Visit
Kerry played a key role in two major deals at the 2023 U.N. summit, known as COP28. He helped broker an agreement on the “loss and damage” fund, a de facto international climate reparations fund to which the Biden administration has committed millions of dollars, as well as the landmark agreement to begin reducing the use of fossil fuels.
However, critics from the left were not fully satisfied with either deal, arguing that the “loss and damage” fund payment was orders of magnitude too low and that the non-binding fossil fuel pledge did not go far enough to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to power the global economy.
Other critics ripped Kerry and American delegates for touting the non-binding agreement as a meaningful achievement and an example of elites’ arrogance when it comes to climate policy. Under the terms of the energy transition commitment, the U.S. is promising to reduce its use of reliable and affordable fuels to fight climate change, but there is no mechanism to compel compliance from countries like China that are contributing far more to global emissions than the U.S.
“John Kerry’s entire role as ‘international climate czar’ is nothing but symbolic time wasting. There is no authorization from Congress, no constitutional or legislative mechanism for his office’s actions, and they will be scrapped as soon as the next President arrives,” Daniel Turner, the founder and executive director of Power The Future, told the DCNF. “At the recent WEF Forum in Davos, Chinese Premier Li Qiang spoke of the need for the west to achieve carbon neutrality knowing full well this agenda makes his country rich. John Kerry has had three years to enact his green agenda, and America is only poorer and weaker for a series of hollow agreements that give him and other WEF elite a feeling of accomplishment.”
Notably, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Saudi Arabian oil minister, praised the energy transition commitment in December 2023 and said that it will not impact his country’s ability to sell oil, according to Al Arabiya News.
Read: John Kerry Cautions Impoverished African Nations Against Natural Gas Projects
China
China also lies at the heart of Kerry’s stint in the Biden administration. In November 2023, just weeks before COP28 kicked off, the State Department announced that Kerry and Xie Zhenhua — China’s special envoy for climate change — had reached a climate cooperation deal between the two countries.
The joint strategy reaffirmed the Biden administration’s commitment to taking on climate change as a global problem with China, even during a time of rocky relations between the two nations and clear signs that China will not ditch fossil fuels anytime soon. China, the world’s second largest economy and by far its leading emitter, permitted two coal plants on average each week in 2o22, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
“It is unrealistic to completely phase out fossil fuel energy,” Zhenhua said in September 2023.
China is considered a “developing” country by international institutions despite its economic prowess, meaning it is not among the countries expected to pay into the “loss and damage” fund or take the lead on international climate cooperation.
The cooperation deal is significant in light of Kerry’s record as a proponent of Chinese climate action. In September 2021, he brushed off a question about human rights and China’s exploitation of Uyghur Muslims in the context of manufacturing green technology like solar panels, telling Bloomberg News that “life is always full of tough choices.” Kerry later suggested he did not remember making that comment when pressed by Republican Rep. Cory Mills of Florida during a July 2023 hearing in front of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.
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Days after that exchange with Mills, Kerry said that China is doing an “incredible job” with its green energy push, disregarding the fact that some Chinese green energy firms are known to use slave labor or have connections to it via their supply chains.
Transparency
Kerry’s office has also stonewalled requests for internal documents and information about his office. He got testy with Mills during the July 2o23 oversight hearing when the congressman asked Kerry to answer straightforward questions about who is working for him in the State Department before refusing to answer those questions on the spot.
The Boston Herald used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to request information about Kerry’s staff. The State Department disclosed information showing that Kerry’s staffers make combined annual salaries in excess of $4 million, but it redacted nearly all of the names and many of the position titles of the employees working for him.
The State Department asserted that revealing the names of Kerry’s employees would amount to a clear violation of their privacy. The White House pledged to “bring transparency and truth back to government” on Jan. 20, 2021, Biden’s first day in office.
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“Since day one, the Biden administration promised transparency. However, what we saw from John Kerry’s office was the exact opposite,” Pete McGinnis, a spokesman for the Functional Government Initiative, told the DCNF. “Kerry’s actions indicate he believes he is exempt from transparency requirements, all while he jetted around the world on the taxpayers’ dime, dished out six figure salaries to loyalists, yet his office repeatedly failed to comply with FOIA requests, ignored media inquiries and even stonewalled oversight efforts from Congress. His leaving his taxpayer-funded perch should not end the efforts to bring transparency.”
Notably, Marty Walsh, who served as labor secretary for Biden until March 2023, disclosed the names, pay and titles of his staff when his agency responded to a similar FOIA request, according to the Herald. The House Oversight and Accountability Committee is also probing Kerry’s office, specifically regarding potential collusion between his staff and a coalition of left-of-center environmentalist groups known as the Powering Past Coal Alliance.
Kerry’s office did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
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