Biden’s re-election campaign will benefit from John Kerry’s resignation as US climate envoy

GG News Bureau

New Delhi, 14th Jan.John Kerry, the US climate envoy and a driving force behind the Biden administration’s efforts to combat climate change, announced his resignation on Saturday, January 13, to focus on the president’s re-election campaign.

Over the past three years, the former senator and secretary of state has been in contact with other nations to increase their climate change pledges. This includes attending the most recent COP28 UN climate summit in Dubai.

Kerry, 80, plans to support Joe Biden’s campaign by highlighting the president’s efforts to address global warming, according to several US media sites that cited people with knowledge of the matter.

 

According to those officials, Kerry told Biden on Wednesday that he planned to step down, and his staff found out on Saturday.

In spite of challenging diplomatic ties, Kerry led the US delegation to three UN climate meetings and collaborated well with China. Combined, the two nations represent 41% of global greenhouse gas emissions, making them the biggest polluters on the planet.

In a rare show of cooperation, the US and China supported the December COP28 climate conference in Dubai, where negotiators reached a historic but weakened deal to start moving away from coal, gas, and oil.

 

A month prior, in California, Kerry had greeted his Chinese colleague Xie Zhenhua, and the two nations had reached an agreement on broad climate action guidelines that provided the foundation for the nearly 200-nation Dubai agreement.

Kerry’s resignation was announced one day after Xie announced his retirement due to health issues.

 

One of Vice President Joe Biden’s first actions upon taking office on January 20, 2021, was to re-join the Paris Climate Agreement, which had been abandoned by former President Donald Trump.

Nevertheless, according to EU climate monitors, 2023 was the warmest year on record, with an increase in Earth’s surface temperature that almost reached the crucial 1.5C threshold.

Axios broke the story first, stating that Kerry, a former Democratic presidential hopeful, will resign at some point in the upcoming months.

An AFP request for comment was not immediately answered by the White House or Kerry’s office.