John Kerry, who served as President Joe Biden’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate up until March of this year, said late last week that a climate emergency needed to be declared.
Kerry made the remarks on Thursday at a recent John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum as the 29th United Nations climate change conference (COP29) concluded.
“I think, personally, we’re on the brink of needing to declare a climate emergency, which is what we really have,” Kerry said. “And we need to get people to behave as if this really is a major transitional challenge to the whole planet, to everybody.”
Kerry said that it was America’s responsibility to pay for energy infrastructure in Africa because the U.S. is the world’s leading economy.
“People in Africa who don’t have electricity need to choose the right kind of electricity and we need to help them be able to afford it and do it,” he said. “We have the largest economy in the world — $24 trillion or $23 trillion economy, maybe more by now.”
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“The next closest is China at about $18 trillion,” he continued. “And, the next closest to the two of us — Germany and Japan at $4 trillion. That’s how far it drops down. You don’t think we have some sort of obligation out of that to be responsible? I think we do.”
He said that the U.S. needs “to make it happen” because “nobody lives as an island in this process, on this planet.”
“And no one country has enough money to deal with the climate crisis,” he said.
He claimed that “the economics of climate work favors people who are feeling the pinch of inflation.”
WATCH:
John Kerry: “We’re on the brink of needing to declare a climate emergency, which is what we really have. And we need to get people to behave!”
WATCH: pic.twitter.com/Rg6mMUch6y
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) November 26, 2024