Welcome to zero. I am Akshatrati. This week blame burden and diplomacy. John Kerry is the forest Cump of climate, the guy you'll find at every important turn in history doing something impactful. In nineteen seventy he was in the streets during the first Earth Day brought ESTs. In nineteen ninety two, he was at the Rio Earth Summit that created the cop meetings as we know them. And in twenty sixteen, as the U s Secretary of State, he signed the Paris Agreement with his granddaughter in his arms.
But it is the last three years between the ages of seventy seven and eighty that he has been fully dedicated to working on the climate issue, and boy, what
a time to get going. In twenty twenty one, soon after he was sworn in, President Joe Biden created a new office for Kerry as the Special Presidential Envoy on Climate, and his first task was to find a way to repair America's global standing in the climate fle That, of course, followed a four year absence during the time when former President Donald Trump decided to pull the US out of
the Paris Agreement and regressed on environmental policies. The US can be rightly blamed for being the country that has put the most amount of Reno's gas emissions cumulatively into the atmosphere, even though China emits more each year today, it is the historical total that is responsible for global warming and driving extreme weather events. Thus, the US should carry the biggest burden in the climate fight, but it
rarely does. Trump's moves only made matters worse. That's why getting the US back on track required Biden to create two teams, one that got working on national climate policies and another one under Carry that began the delicate work of international diplomacy. Three years on, Carry has decided to step away from the post of Climate Envoy. I got a chance to sit down with him in Paris on the sidelines of the fiftieth anniversary meeting of the International
Energy Agency. I asked him about whether he succeeded at restoring us' global credibility, the difficulties of making progress in multilateral diplomacy, and what still keeps him up at night. Welcome to the show, mister secretary.
Thank you. I'm delighted to be with you. Thank you.
Now let me just start by acknowledging something important there are few people, if any, who have had such a long arc in the environment and climate world. As a citizen, you were on the very first day of Earth Day in nineteen seventy among the protesters on the streets. As a senator, you were there for the pivotal Senate hearing where climate scientist Jim Hanson spoke clearly than ever before about the coming dangers of climate change in nineteen eighty eight.
You were there, of course, at the nineteen ninety two Rio Earth Summit that led to the creation of the conventions that give us the COP meetings as they exist. And you were there with your granddaughter signing the Paris Agreement in twenty sixteen, and of course your most recent role as the Special Envoy on Climate for the US, you got the US and the EU together at COP twenty six in twenty twenty one to focus on reducing
methane emissions. Now, just reflecting on that long journey, what would be two or three other memorable moments that I did not list.
Unless my mother, drafting me when I was in elementary school, took me out to early morning bird walk and she created a actually a nature path, and she was a great activist She actually years later founded a recycling program in the town in which she lived. She loved victory gardens and things like that, so I was very blessed to have terrific input and a family that cared enormously about the environment.
Now you said that one of your greatest fears is that the world may not pick up the pace of reducing emissions and slowing down climate change, that people will continue on business as usual. If I were to pick a moment in history, the nineteen eighty eighth Senate hearing, when it seemed both Republicans and Democrats were in agreement
that climate change is something that must be tackled. Knowing what you know today, what would you tell your forty five year old self then that would have helped the world move faster on tackling climate change.
I don't think it's a question of what I would have told people. I think it's more a question of what evidence did we have to make the argument to be able to persuade people, And I think obviously we just didn't have enough. At that point in time. It was new, it was scary, it was big, It was a little out of proportion to the things that most people were wrestling with in the Senate, and some people just shrug their shoulders, and you know, that's somewhere way
down the road in the future. I'm not going to worry about that today. And that has characterized a great deal of the years of the climate crisis, of it growing, an indifference, greed, business as usual, a sense of lack of adequate input and evidence. Human nature, I mean, a whole bunch of things have blind in a terrible sort of conspiracy of just realities to prevent people from being as forward leaning as early as we needed to be.
So we're facing grave consequences now. And that's really what we're trying to convince people of is, Look, we can solve the problem. We have the knowledge of what we have to do. We even have enough technologies to get to twenty thirty. But we can get to that date and fulfill our obligation to reduce emissions by a minimum of forty three percent. We can do that, but not
everyone is choosing to do that. So we have a political challenge here, and one of organizing a great part of the world to act responsibly.
It is the first time that all countries have agreed to set recommendations that could, in principle keep us on track to meet Paris goals, especially the one point five degree celsius goal. The question is that to do any of it will require trillions of dollars to move many times from developed countries to developing countries, and that's no longer a crazy thing to think about. Last year, global investment in energy transition was one point eight trillion dollars,
so we're already talking in the trillions now. But the biggest gap does remain in developing countries. Those are the places that are not getting the investments that are needed. The power of the US is the largest shareholder of World Bank, for example, can make that happen. There is a conversation right now around reforming the multilateral development banks to be unlocking these trillions of dollars needed for the
climate transition. What do you think is needed today, exactly today to make it happen.
Well, let me if I may respectfully correct one thing you said, which is it's not a question of not being able to do any of it. We can do a lot of it. We just can't guarantee that we're going to get to the goal of net zero twenty fifty and of the production we need by twenty thirty, because if we don't get it by twenty thirty, there is no net zero twenty fifty. But we can do a lot of things, and we are doing a lot of things. It's just not big enough. It's not enough.
It has to come to scale and it has to happen faster. But there are clearly steps being taken now and have been sort of building up to develop new technologies to deploy many of those new technologies. We need to have better storage, We need to have green hydrogen, We need better electrolyzers. We need to be able to hopefully win the battle of a new energy production called fusion. We have to be able to get more solar and more wind deployed much faster. We have to apply AI
to this. I mean, they're just a whole bunch of things. These ready to are just staring us in the face. And unfortunately no country has enough money to automatically implement every part of this. We've got to pick the priorities, I guess, and move as rapidly as we can. But I feel greater optimism now, partly as a result of COP twenty eight in Dubai, but partly as a result of what people are doing all over the world. We have many new initiatives that have come out of our work.
I'm proud to say, out of the Special Presidential Envoys Office that was created, we've got initiatives that are bringing companies to the table and accelerating their ability to take hard to abate sectors of the economy like shipping or aviation, or cement or steel, et cetera. And they're addressing those things. We also have very significant reduction in the price of solar and wind. It's almost free in a sense, and
we need to deploy much more rapidly. So I think we're on the cusp of just a major economic transformation where the economies of the world are all going to be moving into a new economic model, which will be a clean energy economy based on these new technologies. So I'm excited by that, and I think that the key for all of us now is to accelerate and scale up. Those are the two biggest things.
Many of the examples that you brought up required government initiative, So have money and first movie Coalition, which you were hinting at, where you brought companies together to purchase green steel or green cement. That's going to have an impact because that'll bring these companies.
It sends the signal to the marketplace, and the marketplace says, oh wow, they're making green steel. We may pay slightly more for it right now, but that's going to advantage the world because it helps us meet our goal.
In the same way, when we're looking at trying to get multilateral development banks reformed so that they can provide that accelerant, you don't need them to provide all the trillions. You need them to provide just the enough amount, hundreds of billions maybe to accelerate the transition. What do you think your role as the US or what government role can be played to enable that reform to actually happen.
We have made some of that reform happen. Whereas in Biden undertook to create change at the World Bank, we have a new leader at the World Bank. Now. In addition to that, we have rules changes that came in with the Fall Meeting and Spring Meeting of the World Bank last year, so that now there's a bigger pot of money available to act as catalytic lending money, so that money can generate even more investment from the private sector, which is exactly its purpose, and that's what we wanted
to do. Think that there are other finance mechanisms we've been working on, and the reason we're working on the finance is that the UN Finance Report and other economic analyzes have all agreed that in order to win the battle, which is what we ought to be doing, let's do what we need to do to win the battle. That means we have to be investing something like two and a half to five trillion dollars a year for the next thirty years, and we're now at about one point
eight trillions. I think you mentioned the key now is to find different ways to catalyze to attract private capital to the table. Why because the private capital can make money, people will be attracted to that marketplace. The truth is that in the US, the clean energy jobs in the last year outpaced other energy jobs. So this is a job creator. This is a really exciting economic transformation, bigger than anything that's happen and economically in the world since
the Industrial Revolution. And I think this would be an even bigger impact economically on all of our countries.
Going back to the point around COP twenty eight, if you look at the conversation around climate action. People often criticize the COP. The global diplomacy framework gets dinged for not being able to act fast enough for what is an urgent problem. The Paris Agreement took twenty years of back and forth to get to that point. If you ask people what should we do as a global community to solve the problem, they come to some solution of
a form that looks like a COP. But if you were to reform cops to become better fit for the challenge we face today, what would you do well?
I think in fairness to the COP process, and I'm not here to say it's perfect, but it represents the hardest form of diploma. See, there is multilateralism. It's a supercharged multilateralism. This isn't ten nations, this isn't G seven, it's not even G twenty. It's about one hundred and ninety five countries globally, and you have to find consensus.
Some people say, well, maybe we shouldn't find convention. Maybe we ought to have a system where we have votes, and you have a vote and majority wins or supermajority wins. The problem with that is that you will wind up with some nations that feel hugely aggrieved at some point in time where everybody just runs over their desires and votes and they go home completely disgraveled, and you don't have a unified effort to do whatever it is you're
trying to do. So it's a mixed blessing. But I think for this kind of effort, the multilateralism that has kind of worked in the last years. Anyway, no country stood up and said we're going to crash this thing in Dubai didn't happen. People left with a consensus, and that consensus creates greater impetus. It really pushes the system forward, and it makes it harder for some other countries to
ignore what everybody else is doing. So I'm not sure, you know, you could pick a thing here or two in the process, but by and large, that was a pretty damn good meeting that took place in Dubai, and the results of it speak for themselves.
So let me ask you the question on the other side, which is COP twenty eight. We shall see if it makes an impact, But what is undeniable is that Cop twenty one, the Paris Agreement, has made an impact.
For sure. Paris was a huge step forward. I was privileged to lead our delegations negotiating team in Paris and spent the full two weeks or whatever there during that time when I was Secretary. But what we achieved building on Paris is may may be more significant. I'm not saying is because right now it's words on a piece of paper. It has to be implemented. That is the key. And what we need to do is make sure that we are really following up, which is what our team
is going to do and I'm going to do. We're going to continue, I'm going to continue to work on the climate issue, not going to run away from it. And I believe we can bring more private sector people to the table, then we can accelerate what we're doing. So if we can do that out of Cop twenty eight, that'll be a huge success, one of the most important cops. So let me if I may say a word about why is Cop twenty eight and do buy so important?
It's important because it created a consensus around the following words. We have to transition away from fossil fuel in a way that is fair, just equitable, and accelerating in this decade. Accelerating in this decade so as to achieve net zero twenty fifty according to the science. Those extra words are really critical. According to the science, means one point five degrees, that's your north start, and net zero twenty fifty means you've got to have a plan. You've got to show
people how you're going to get there. And accelerating in this decade is really critical because there are a whole bunch of folks who have sort of way out there goals that won't accelerate this decade, and the only way we get there is to accelerate in this decade. That's the importance of this cop It's created a framework that
could actually change behavior and greatly accelerate our efforts. It depends on the goodwill, good faith, good sense of countries to really now put their older to the wheel and make it happen.
It is very important to recognize that those order of words, those extra words matter because they've been signed off by all one hundred and ninety five countries.
Well well also a particular meaning to getting the job done, of.
Course, and so when you think about the Paris Agreement, just reflecting on the strength that it is that it allowed the countries to be able to progress. What are things you think people don't appreciate about the Paris Agreement that you in your everyday job take for grunted.
Well, I mean, I think if you went out and asked the average person in the street anywhere and say what do you think of the Paris Agreement, they say, what is up for the Eiffel Tower? Or is about the sand River? Or what is that about? It's more the activists and the government officials and a lot of private sector now who are following very closely what's happening.
But the average person, you know, they follow the flood, and they follow the tornado, and they see what's happening in the weather dramatically because of what's happening with the crisis. But you're not going to expect them to know the details of that kind of an agreement.
And so as climate solutions start getting more and more closer to people's lives, more and more about the decisions they make on a daily basis, what do they eat, what do they drive, where they travel? Is it important that people who understand the Paras Agreement, who understand this world, make that point understood to the audience, so that the social license for climate action is available.
Everybody who is an activist on a climate issue needs to be even more active. They need to communicate regularly. They need to be pushing candidates, or pushing resolutions, or running for office or It takes an activism to do what we have to do here, and we need a lot more activists.
More from the conversation after the break. Now, One reason why what you say makes such a difference is because you represent the world's largest economy. Another reason is that it's also the country that has contributed the most in
adding to the greenhouse gas load causing the problem. Going back to the nineteen ninety two Reo Earth Summit, it enshrined the idea of common but differentiated responsibilities, which basically says those with greater means should do more to address the problem, and the US is the country with the
greatest means. But you also bristle at the idea that doing more should just mean cold, hard government cash, which analysis is after analysis shows that the US hasn't quite contributed as much as it should, So if not cash, one place you say that the US has made a fundamental contribution is around technology development. Do you think just those two things are enough for what the US must do to match up to its responsibility behind the cumulative emissions that it has been up.
Absolutely not. No, I do not believe that that is enough, nor is that what we have allowed to be enough, because we've been the ones pushing a whole bunch of other initiatives, and unknown to a lot of people, while a particular program of climate may not have been as fully funded as something else or someone else chose to be,
we are the largest humanitarian donor in the world. We hit the one hundred billion that had been promised in Paris, and everybody was contentious about why isn't that hit, Why isn't that hit. It turns out it was hit and met in twenty twenty two. It was met last year in twenty three, and that's partly because we put up more money, but we also worked with other countries to bring more to the table. So I think we've had
a very positive impact in that way. President Biden has put forward an emergency plan for dealing with adaptation, and in that plan, he's promised twelve billion dollars in order to help make that happen. He's put down payments down each year now in the budget and what we chose to do was address America's absence from the prior four years. So we approached it with humility because we needed to
be humble. Having not contributed money or been involved for those four years, we knew we had to earn our credibility and work our way back. We worked hard at doing that. President Biden rejoined the agreement the afternoon, within a couple hours of being sworn in as president, and we began the process of moving around the world doing climate diplomacy to raise other countries ambition, to get people to put in a new National Determined Contribution so called NDC.
And people did, and so we held a summit in the East Room of the White House. Virtually President she took part, President Putin took part. It was before Ukraine and other tensions, but we got people to commit during that to raise their ambition for Glasgow and then raise their ambition for Sharma Shaik And ultimately we really succeeded in pulling people to a whole bunch of initiatives that
made a difference. We started Agriculture Initiative to help farmers and other people be able to deal with new forms of agriculture or ways in which they could deal with methane or other challenges. We created the Methane Pledge. We started with about twenty countries. Now we have one hundred and fifty five nations onto this, and there's major attention
on methane. We also put out a pledge to triple the deployment of nuclear and to double energy efficiency, which is one of the best ways you can reduce costs at some point. We have a maritime shipping initiative which is now seeing ships building a carbon free propulsion on those ships. So there are so many places where I think our initiative has helped. And I say that not with any arrogance or anything, but with pride, with a
sense also that that's making a difference. We really did change the way everybody is engaging in this by raising ambition and starting these initiatives.
Absolutely, and let me just pick methane emissions. Because the pledge started with only twenty countries, it wasn't part of the main negotiated document in Glasgow, and of course that hasn't stopped it from being effective and growing in size. So there is clearly reayson which even outside of these big thick channels of diplomacy that you can make stuff happen, but you're also going to be moving on from this job, staying in climate doing other things. It would be remiss
to not ask about your frustrations in this role. What stopped you from doing more, or what were things that you wanted but you couldn't achieve that you would hope your successor.
I would have loved to have been able to invest more funding in the transition to help people have a just fair, equitable transition. So you have to be able to try to get some focus on poor or disenfranchised communities. I would have liked to have seen us be able to help some of those communities more than we've been able to, even though we have upped the amount of assistance that they're getting and the focus that they're getting.
I wish we could have gotten Congress more enlisted in this so that we were really putting some of the federal money on the table that we need to be able to attract more private sector money. You have to de risk some of these deals out there. But all in all, I don't look at I honestly don't think that there are that many regrets by us, except for the speed and size of what we all wish we
were doing. All the programs we tried to put in place are in place, They are working, they are making a difference.
Now, last question, one big pitcher question. You've said the
thing that is slowing progress down is political will. Now, if you go back to nineteen seventy, to that Earth Day and you look over the lifetime of looking at environmental issues, climate issues as Secretary of State, traveling around the world, do you think there is now enough political will or much more than we had in the past, that this thing is something that people will remain focused on and address, if not to the perfect level, but at least go much much closer to the goals.
Well, there's not enough. There's much more, and no question, there's much more, and there could be more, and there needs to be even more. But what we do know is that what we have been able to achieve has
really moved the ball very significantly. I mean, if you listen to the IA where we are today as we're having this conversation, the IA has helped to change the playing field and has helped us to have a referee who can kind of step in and say, hey, wait a minute, you got to do this, or you've got to do that, or here's what's happening. And they've been really good on the science, really good on helping people to understand the reality of why we have to move.
Even more so, there are a lot of partnerships that have come out of this. The IA and US Envoy's Office is one of them. But we've also built much stronger relationships with a lot of our fellow ministers in Germany and France and Norway and the UK around the world. That's been really satisfying. Now you raised the question, you know, why not more, why aren't we kind of getting it done? We face basic human behavior as a challenge in this.
First of all, it's a big issue. Hard to get your arms around it and grasp it if you're just living everyday life and don't deal with it all the time. And in addition, there's some bad actors. We are fighting disinformation, we're fighting exploitation, people who scare people and say, oh my god, you know, look at these guys. They want to tell you what kind of car you have to drive, They want to force you into an untenable job or whatever. No, no, and no, and no, we're not trying to do anything
like that. We want people to choose whatever it is they want, but we want them to have the ability to have a wise choice steering them in the face. And that means that you've got to have the opportunities to have clean power, you've got to have good long distance travel and batteries for electric vehicles, and you've got to do more to sort of make that happen than
we are. So I really think that we've got a template, we know what we have to do, but human nature is a challenge at times, and people are scared sometimes and they hear from somebody, oh, you know, if you do that, you're not going to be able to get to work, or you know, your energy will be shut
off or something. There's just an awful lot of outright lying and there's sort of a selfish greed that does motivate some people who are in places where they can have an impact, and so that's one of the things we have to fight and fight back against.
Thank you, mister secretary, Thank you for listening to Zero. If you liked this episode, please take a moment to rate or review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Share this episode with a friend or with someone who liked for us come. You can get in touch at zero pod at Bloomberg dot net. Zero's producers are Tiffany Choi, Magnus Henriksen and Somarsadi. Our theme music is composed by Wonderly Special thanks to Kira Bindram and Jender luis I am Akshatrati back So