{"id":407247,"date":"2024-03-06T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-06T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=407247"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T14:00:00","slug":"John-Kerry-reflects-on-time-as-top-US-climate-negotiator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/John-Kerry-reflects-on-time-as-top-US-climate-negotiator\/","title":{"rendered":"John Kerry reflects on time as top US climate negotiator"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON<\/strong> (AP)\u2014Time was running out and U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry knew it.<\/p>\n

International climate talks in mid-December were stuck with no agreement to phase out oil, gas and coal, fossil fuels that are the root cause of global warming.<\/p>\n

The United Nations sponsored conference official end date, a day after Kerry\u2019s 80th birthday, was fast approaching. What\u2019s more, Kerry\u2019s Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, who helped craft past deals with him, announced that he was retiring. Opportunity could be slipping away at the summit known as COP28, being held in Dubai.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt made me bear down and get to a lot more meetings, one-on-one and otherwise, and frankly dragooned a few other people into the effort to persuade and make the difference,\u201d Kerry recalled during a recent interview with The Associated Press, given ahead of his retirement this week.<\/p>\n

In the heat of negotiations, the energy minister of Saudi Arabia, an oil-rich nation that has long opposed diplomatic attempts to limit fossil fuels, agreed on language about \u201ctransitioning away\u201d from the carbon-belching energy supplies.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t get excited yet,\u201d Kerry recalled telling himself. He had seen victories slip away at the last moment before.<\/p>\n

This time it didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Instead, the deal struck turned out to be what Kerry now calls the high point of the world\u2019s 30-year effort to curb ever-worsening climate change. All in just 48 hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a major breakthrough,\u201d Kerry said, one that made him ready to leave his climate diplomacy job after three years. In January, Kerry announced plans to step down and Wednesday will be his last in office.<\/p>\n

Sitting in his U.S. State Department office with cavernous ceilings, wood paneled walls festooned with modern art and photographs, Kerry reflected on his years leading America\u2019s efforts to combat climate change and detailed why he believed the Dubai agreement was so important.<\/p>\n

In the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, which Kerry, at the time secretary of state, signed with a granddaughter on his lap, nations were only required to enact plans they wrote up. That allowed countries like China to leave out major things, like the need to reduce emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe now have an agreement globally that we have to transition away from fossil fuel, that we have to do it with urgency, immediately in this decade, beginning now, and that we have to do it by including all greenhouse gases,\u201d said Kerry.<\/p>\n

Still, not everyone is enamored with international climate efforts so far.<\/p>\n

\u201cOverblown,\u201d said climate negotiations historian Joanna Depledge, referring to Kerry\u2019s assessment of Dubai as the high point of climate diplomacy.<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you seen oil and gas prices shift in response to the adoption of the Dubai Consensus?\u201d Depledge of the University of Cambridge in England said in an email. \u201cNo, nor have I. We are making incremental progress. That\u2019s great. But a whole new track? No.\u201d<\/p>\n

Depledge said Kerry will be remembered as \u201ca force for good in the negotiations,\u201d turning the page on low points, such as previous U.S. administrations pulling out\u2014twice\u2014from international climate agreements.<\/p>\n

Kerry said the second time the U.S. pulled out of an agreement, when former President Donald Trump removed America from the Paris accord soon after taking office in 2017, the country\u2019s reputation was damaged, as were international efforts to fight climate change.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

John Kerry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP)\u2014Time was running out and U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry knew it. International climate…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-407247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}