The United States’ climate envoy, John Kerry, will step down in the coming months to join President Joe Biden’s election campaign, his office confirmed this Saturday. Kerry, 80, a former Democratic presidential nominee in 2004 and secretary of state in Barack Obama’s administration, informed the White House of his decision this week. His replacement has not yet been announced.
No specific date has yet been set for the departure of Kerry, who plans to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland) next week and the Munich Security Conference in February. His departure is expected sometime before April.
The envoy’s decision comes a month after he helped achieve a key agreement at last month’s UN climate change summit in Dubai, COP 28, in which countries pledged to “leave behind” fossil fuels, a key driver of global warming.
Whoever replaces him, his confirmation in the Senate is expected to be a tough fight. As an envoy appointed by the White House in 2021, Kerry did not have to go through that process in the upper house, where the Republican minority has for months blocked key government appointments, including Julie Sue, Biden’s proposal to take charge. Department of Labor. But changes to the law in 2022 now include a provision that must get approval from senators to take effect.
Kerry has left an important mark at the forefront of US climate change policy. The former Secretary of State has led his country’s respective delegations to three UN Climate Summits. As Obama’s foreign policy chief, in 2015 he was instrumental in signing the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which established emission reduction targets for signatory countries.
During his presidency (2017–2021), Donald Trump withdrew the United States from these agreements. After his arrival at the White House, Biden signed the return of the country, the second most polluted country in the world, to a global treaty. As climate envoy, Kerry took on a particularly complex mission: conveying the message to the world that Washington once again wants to be a leader in the fight against global warming.
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During his tenure, the former secretary of state has also maintained rapprochement with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, another country that is primarily responsible for carbon emissions, and with whom he has negotiated such thorny issues as whether developing countries should also reduce their emissions. . At moments of crisis in relations between the two governments, the two ambassadors maintained contact. Kerry’s visit to China in 2023 represents a key step in the process of normalizing relations between the two giants, amid a crisis between the two countries caused by the downing of a Chinese hot air balloon by the US. Xi, 74, has also announced his retirement for health reasons and will be replaced by former Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin.
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