10:00 p.m. on December 11, 2021, modified at 10:17 p.m. on December 11, 2021
John Kerry, the former Democratic candidate for the White House who became Hillary Clinton’s successor at the head of the State Department, celebrated his 78th birthday on Saturday in Paris where he met earlier the Minister for the Ecological Transition, Barbara Pompili, and the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire. In France as earlier in Brussels and London, John Kerry, US President Joe Biden’s special envoy for the Climate, travels through major capitals to convince the 20 largest polluters in the world to support the United States in their ecological transition.
One of the objectives of the COP26 in Glasgow was to add 100 billion dollars to the fund that allows poor countries to finance their ecological transition, but this target was missed. Can the United States allow this to be corrected?
We’ll get there. We are close to 97 billion for 2022 and we will reach 100 billion. This figure is crucial, and President Biden quadrupled the initial U.S. stake to $ 11.4 billion. We can do better and we will do it as long as our 2022 budget allows it, and I remind you that this is our first budget since the arrival of Joe Biden to the White House, the previous one dating from the Trump presidency. I also recall that President Biden returned to the Paris Agreement, that his presidential decrees made it possible to put an end to the most harmful policies initiated by Donald Trump, that he created this post of special envoy for the Climate that ‘he told me and that he convened an international summit last April to ensure that leaders around the world revise their ambitions upwards. This figure of 100 billion should not therefore distract us from the essential. Globally, we will need much more, billions of billions, to make this ecological transition a success.
Read also – Barbara Pompili, Minister of Ecological Transition, at JDD: “The climate fight is doing better after COP26”
How to achieve this in your country?
We have brought together the largest financial institutions in the United States and the six largest American banks have pledged to invest 4.6 trillion over the next 10 years in financing the transition. Other investment funds have promised to do more, such as Black Rock which will put 1,000 billion on the table with the plan to double this amount thereafter. Much of this money is already available and it is now up to the states to put in place the policies that will need this funding. It is not free money that can be squandered, it is investment provided that countries speed up their reforms and reduce the bureaucracy that holds them back. This is the meaning of my mission at the moment in the twenty richest and most polluting countries on the planet.
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It is not a question of haggling over its lifestyle or its culture but of cooperating all together to make our countries safer
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Can you name those who have not revised their goals upwards?
Everyone knows them, they are responsible for 80% of CO2 emissions. China is the first polluter, we are the second followed by India, then by Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, Saudi Arabia. Many are already doing things well but we need to go further, such as South Africa which is trying to catch up with the goal of a 1.5 ° C rise in temperatures. We are working with the South African government on an $ 8.5 billion plan to accelerate their exit from coal. In India, we have created a partnership with Prime Minister Modi to provide finance and technology to deploy renewable energies up to 450 megawatts.
Why is it harder on China?
I look forward to working more closely with China, which is essential in this crisis. I told them that cooperating with us was in no way preferential treatment and that the climate could not be the subject of a political quarrel between us but that the scientists demanded of us that we agree to avoid worst consequences of climate change. We are not there yet with China. Everyone must come to the table. I am hopeful that I will eventually create a joint working group with China. We still have to appoint our experts who will lead the work and I hope that their recommendations will allow us to drastically reduce our emissions.
Read also – COP26: “China has not advanced enough to meet its carbon neutrality objectives”
In Washington, the Senate has still not adopted the famous Build Back Better plan of which a third of the budget must accelerate the American ecological transition. Are you sure it will be voted on?
The ecological component of this plan amounts to $ 555 billion. I am optimistic that it will be because it will help us better support the transition and help others. No government in the world has the money to make the whole planet get away with it. We are therefore obliged to cooperate all together by inviting the private sector to join us with its own funds. Our plan is fundamental to lead us towards a new energy economy. It contains provisions for tax reductions, tax credits for companies, funding for research and development, allocates tens of billions to the fight against carbon pollution and methane gas emissions, 23 billion for agriculture greener is considerable.
President George HW Bush is credited with a phrase uttered at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 that “the American way of life is not negotiable. ”Is this still the case?
This crisis no longer has anything to do with the American way of life. Today we are talking about the survival of human beings on this planet, not in any particular country. It is not a question of haggling over one’s lifestyle or culture, but of all cooperating together to make our economies stronger and our countries more secure, especially in terms of energy independence.
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Because of Donald Trump, Iran is now closer to having atomic weapons than before
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Has Europe adopted its plan to fight imported deforestation? What about the United States?
We have something similar. We recalled in our agreement with China that it must apply its own laws against deforestation. President Biden has presented his own plan to increase efforts against deforestation around the world. This plan, adopted in Glasgow, covers 90% of the world’s forests. We are also working with Brazil to put an end to deforestation in 2028. I myself spoke with the brokers in the timber market so that they could adopt more rigorous standards, particularly with regard to illicit trafficking in this sector. We are also supporting Indonesia in its goal of reducing deforestation by 25%.
You have experienced multiple crises as Secretary of State to Barack Obama, how do you assess the one unfolding on the border between Russia and Ukraine?
Joe Biden was very clear during his summit with the Russian president on the level of concern that we share with the rest of the world on this matter and on the consequences that Russia would have to suffer in the event of military intervention against Ukraine. Like many, I hope that those who have kept their cool and have been reasonable will win in the end. Joe Biden did not beat around the bush and therefore invited President Putin and NATO to have a discussion on the subject. But I note, despite everything, that the situation remains very unpredictable.
You negotiated with your partners in 2015 the Vienna Agreement on Iranian nuclear power and the negotiations to revive it are off to a bad start. Are you pessimistic?
Donald Trump, on Iran, made the worst foreign policy decision in our country’s history when he withdrew from the Accord in 2018. Because of him, thank you Donald Trump, Iran is today closer to having the atomic weapon than before. No one can predict what the coming weeks and months will look like, but they have the potential to be very serious and even dangerous. Here too, I hope that cold heads will prevail.
Read also – COP26: why the issues around the climate can overturn global geopolitics
Are you not distraught to see that these security crises obscure the fight so necessary to save the planet?
The world has always been a complicated place. But now there are nuclear powers, a very dangerous cyber activity, there is a tendency to destroy the objective reality of facts that are used to make political decisions. All of this is worrying. But my job is to remind world leaders that they need to be more ambitious to combat the effects of climate change. What encourages me is that it is doable. If we keep the promises made in Glasgow and go far beyond it, if China and Russia participate in this effort, we can win. Not for ourselves as a country, but for humanity.
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