Climate envoy Kerry says talks can yield ‘enormous progress’

MILAN, Italy — U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry said Saturday that he thinks “enormous progress” can be made at the upcoming United Nations climate talks in Scotland but more governments must come up with concrete commitments in the next 30 days.

Kerry attended a preparatory meeting in Milan, where delegates from around the world sought to identify where progress can be made before the U.N. climate change conference starts in Glasgow on Oct. 31.

The 12-day summit aims to secure more ambitious commitments to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) with a goal of keeping it to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial levels. The event also is focused on mobilizing financing and protecting vulnerable communities and natural habitats.

“The bottom line is, folks, as we stand here today, we believe we can make enormous progress in Glasgow, moving rapidly towards the new goals that the science is telling us we must achieve,’’ Kerry said. That means achieving a 45% reduction in carbon emissions in the next 10 years. “This is the decisive decade,” he said.

The former U.S. senator and secretary of State said that countries representing 55% of the world’s gross domestic product — Britain, Canada, Japan, the United States and the 27 European Union members — have submitted plans that hit the 1.5degree target by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

But he also noted that the 89 new national submissions would cut emissions by only 12%, and that the sum of all 191 submissions as they are currently written would increase emissions between now and 2030 by 16%.

Kerry declined to single out any country but said there are ways to achieve lower emissions that aren’t that expensive, including organizing power grids and making transmission more efficient.

China is the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, and the U.S. is second. Kerry said President Biden has had “constructive” talks on the subject with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Kerry also highlighted commitments by India’s leader to install 450 gigawatts of renewable power over the next decade.

The European commissioner for climate action, Frans Timmermans, underlined the importance of meeting the $100-billion annual funding commitment to help vulnerable countries fight climate change during 2020-25, as demanded by youth activists who met earlier in Milan.

Timmermans said the financing needs going forward would be much greater than that amount and that public funding alone would not cover the anticipated price tag.

Already the Earth has seen a 1-degree Celsius temperature change and unpredictable weather patterns that have destroyed harvests and killed livelihoods, he said.

“So there can be no doubt in anybody’s mind that we are fighting for the survival of humanity, and that the climate crisis and the threatening ecocide are the biggest threat humanity faces,” Timmermans said. “We need to change, and we need to change radically and we need to change fast. That’s going to be bloody hard. That’s the bad news.”