Kerry bowing out as U.S. climate envoy
John Kerry, President Joe Biden’s special envoy for climate, plans to step down from the Biden administration by spring, according to two people familiar with his plans.
Mr. Kerry, 80, has served as the president’s top diplomat on climate change since early 2021, working to cajole governments around the world to aggressively cut their planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
He led the U.S. negotiating team through three United Nations climate summits, reasserting American leadership after the country withdrew from the Paris climate agreement during the Trump administration.
Mr. Kerry championed cooperation on global warming between the United States and China, the world’s two largest polluters, during times of tension.
On Wednesday, Mr. Kerry met with Mr. Biden to inform the president of his intention to resign, according to one person familiar with the meeting. On Saturday, his staff learned of his decision at a hastily arranged meeting, said the person, who asked to remain anonymous in order to discuss personnel matters.
Mr. Kerry told staff that he intended to depart in the coming months, and he is widely expected to get involved in the 2024 presidential campaign to help raise awareness of Mr. Biden’s work on climate change.
In the meantime Mr. Kerry is planning to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, next week.
The White House didn’t respond Saturday to a request for comment. Mr. Kerry’s plans were first reported by Axios.
A former Massachusetts senator, Democratic presidential nominee and secretary of state under President Barack Obama, Mr. Kerry brought a celebrity status to the global climate summits.
He Kerry traveled to 31 countries in an effort to restore confidence in the U.S. on climate change and persuade other countries to do more to help keep the average global temperature from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels. That’s the threshold beyond which scientists say the dangers of global warming grow considerably. Humans have already heated the planet by an average of 1.2 degrees Celsius since the 19th century, largely by burning fossil fuels.
Mr. Kerry played a key role in urging Mr. Biden to set a more aggressive target for greenhouse gas emissions for the United States, which the president did by pledging to cut emissions roughly in half by 2030. But Mr. Kerry’s record in persuading other nations to act was mixed.
In November the United States and China agreed to jointly tackle global warming by ramping up wind, solar and other renewable energy. That deal came together after years of diplomacy between Mr. Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua. Yet it fell short of a promise by China to phase out its heavy use of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel or to stop building new coal plants.
Mr. Kerry’s decision to step down comes on the heels of an announcement by Mr. Xie that he, too, is retiring.