There was dismay in climate circles last week when John Kerry stepped down from his role as US climate envoy to focus on Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.
I don’t share it. Yes, Kerry is the most effective member of the US gerontocracy and has been crucial in forging what international consensus there is on climate change.
Illustration: Andrew Dyson.Credit:
Yet if Kerry is going to spend what must surely be the last months of his extraordinary public life fighting for climate change action, there is no better place for him than Biden’s campaign.
No single figure on earth could be a greater threat to its climate than a re-elected Donald Trump.
During his first term Trump abandoned the Paris Agreement. With a gut instinct towards deregulation turbocharged by fossil fuel donors he scrapped over 100 environment regulations, including crucial standards on methane emissions from oil and gas production and landfills, and federal fuel economy standards. Were all of his first-term policies to have been fully realised they would have collectively created the same combined emissions as Germany, Britain and Canada over a year – 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide – according to one analysis.
No single figure on earth could be a greater threat to its climate than a re-elected Donald Trump.Credit: Nine
The only thing that prevented Trump’s presidency from being an unsalvageable calamity for domestic and international action on climate change was his own unpreparedness for office.
As reported in journalist Michael Wolff’s 2018 book, Fire and Fury, Trump neither expected nor particularly wanted to win the 2016 election. That is not the case now.
Trump is fighting hard and, so far, effectively for a second term. The forces that have coalesced behind him are determined to use it to prosecute causes that range from right-wing to radically reactionary.
‘Drill, baby, drill!’ Trump 2.0 wouldn’t just kill the political climate
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23.01.2024
There was dismay in climate circles last week when John Kerry stepped down from his role as US climate envoy to focus on Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.
I don’t share it. Yes, Kerry is the most effective member of the US gerontocracy and has been crucial in forging what international consensus there is on climate change.
Illustration: Andrew Dyson.Credit:
Yet if Kerry is going to spend what must surely be the last months of his extraordinary public life........
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