66 Time November 8/November 15, 2021
perhaps the zenith of relations between the two coun-
tries in recent years. In the early days of the Biden Ad-
ministration, longtime watchers of international climate
politics speculated about whether Kerry would try to
repeat that effort. Kerry told me that from the outset
he knew that wouldn’t be possible—the Trump presi-
dency had spoiled the well, and, while less vociferous,
Biden hasn’t sought to placate China. “It’s a very, very
different time now,” Kerry says. “It’s a very different set
of political circumstances.”
Instead, he sought a subtler form of rapprochement,
traveling to China in April, becoming the first senior U.S.
official to visit since the start of the pandemic. His mes-
sage, he says, was to create a lane for climate collabora-
tion amid the iciness. The reception was a sharp con-
trast from the jubilant atmosphere at the state dinner
six years earlier. The two parties released a joint state-
ment, agreeing to cooperate but not much more. Then in
September, after making the 7,000-mile trip to Tianjin,
Kerry encountered even more tense feelings. Despite
the long journey, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi only
met with him virtually, and said that climate collabora-
tion could not be an “oasis” away from the other rifts in
the relationship. “If the oasis is surrounded by desert,
sooner or later the oasis will also become desert,” he said.
Nonetheless, Kerry remains optimistic. He has met
with his counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, more than two
dozen times and insists that China “remains essen-
tial” to the U.S. strategy. But his approach has neces-
sarily been to give the country space. “They will not get
pushed,” he says. “If you publicly are trying to hash this
out, it’s going to work against you.”
Other countries have been more open to entreaties.
In April, Kerry traveled to South Korea and made the
case for ending international coal financing abroad;
a few days later, at a U.S.-hosted climate summit, the
South Korean government announced it would do just
that. Japan followed a few weeks later. In September,
Kerry sent a delegation to South Africa to work with
allies to put together a financial package to wean the
country off of coal. And Kerry’s joint initiative with the
E.U. to push other nations to cut emissions from meth-
ane, a potent greenhouse gas, has drawn commitments
from at least two dozen countries.
Kerry’s job centers on engaging other countries, but
he says that the immense role the private sector plays in
global affairs makes corporate leaders an essential tar-
get. The private sector, he says, has the power to make or
break the efforts of diplomats. “There’s no way to get this
done unless the private sector buys in 100%,” he says.
So, when Kerry isn’t meeting with his official counter-
parts, he’s often working the room with CEOs and other
executives, pushing them to join business coalitions and
highlighting the companies that are making progress.
In New York, in late September, Kerry took the stage
at the Concordia Summit at the same time that world
leaders were gathering a few blocks away for the U.N.
General Assembly. The Concordia conference draws a
mix of public officials, corporate executives and civil-
society leaders, and Kerry’s session featured senior ex-
ecutives from LinkedIn and Apple, whom he peppered
with questions as he announced the Glasgow Is Our
Business initiative, which is designed to show corpo-
rate support for a robust outcome at COP26. A few weeks
later, in Geneva, I watched as Kerry convened a meeting
of more than two dozen companies —from DHL to the
Boston Consulting Group—to discuss what he named
the First Movers Coalition, whose members all com-
mit to helping bring new clean technologies to market.
“I’ve had several calls with him, he talked to our
board... I’ve had some video conferences with him,”
says Scott Kirby, the CEO of United Airlines, a member
of the coalition. “The only way to solve this is a public-
private partnership where like-minded people in the
public arena and the private arena find real solutions.”
In his position, Kerry has traveled to more than a
dozen countries and met with many more leaders from
other countries and the private sector. It follows that
energy is often the first word that comes to mind when I
ask officials around the world about him. “He’s a force,”
says Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy
Agency. That energy, combined with Kerry’s long-term
commitment to the effort, has translated into a slew of
constructive bonds—the glue that keeps diplomacy in-
tact. Frans Timmermans, who leads climate policy in
the E.U., said they share a “strong personal relationship”
after years of working together. “There’s a base of trust,
and that makes these complicated things easier,” he says.
“There’s just no substitute for the kind of deep,
meaningful, decades-long relationships John brings to
his role,” Wendy Sherman, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of
State, told TIME. “It’s ultimately relationships like his
that are critical to achieving diplomatic breakthroughs.”
But relationships can go only so far. Kerry has also
had to combat persistent questions about the U.S.’s
own climate commitments. Under Trump, the U.S.
had reneged on a commitment to help finance cli-
mate efforts in developing countries. And although
Biden in April proposed contributing $5.7 billion an-
nually, much of the rest of the world rejected that as
insufficient. In interview after interview, Kerry made
it clear that he was pushing hard for Biden to double
down on his commitment. “We made a promise back in
Paris,” he said in July. “We have to live up to our prom-
ises.” After much wrangling, Biden announced in Sep-
tember that the U.S. would double its commitment.
More recently, attention has focused on whether the
U.S. can actually meet its own emissions targets. In April,
President Biden promised to cut emissions in half by
2030 when compared with 2005 levels, but the details
remain fuzzy on how he plans to achieve it. The spending
packages currently on Capitol Hill would likely take the
U.S. close to those targets, but they remain up in the air.
“John Kerry is doing his best, but Congress may or
may not fulfill the climate commitments,” says Mary
Robinson, the former President of Ireland who now