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legislation that would have capped U.S. emissions while
working behind the scenes on efforts to educate his col-
leagues on the urgency of climate science. “He came at
this with a lot of personal determination,” says Sheldon
Whitehouse, a Democratic Senator from Rhode Island.
Kerry took over as Secretary of State in 2013, at the
beginning of President Obama’s second term. His ten-
ure is perhaps best remembered for his role broker-
ing the ill-fated Iran nuclear nonproliferation deal, but
Kerry also takes particular pride in his work to center
climate diplomacy in the U.S. foreign policy apparatus.
Immediately upon taking office, Kerry began traveling
the world, putting the issue on the agenda of heads of
government rather than just environment ministers. In-
side the department, he pushed every diplomat to have
basic fluency on the issue and incorporated it into talk-
ing points for meetings large and small. “He basically
said that every diplomat at the State Department was
going to be a climate negotiator, on one level or another,”
says Jon Finer, Kerry’s chief of staff at the time who now
serves as the Deputy National Security Adviser.
All this helped lay the groundwork for the talks that
would eventually yield the Paris Agreement, which sets
up a framework for countries to reduce their emissions.
Although the French hosts shepherded the deal into ex-
istence, the structure and details of the agreement were
designed to meet the exigencies of U.S. politics. Kerry
remained on the ground for most of the two-week con-
ference, engaging directly in negotiations most Cabinet
officials would leave to underlings. A wide range of offi-
cials ultimately deserve some credit for shaping the Paris
deal, which was the result of intense negotiations be-
tween nearly 200 nations, but Kerry played a central role
steering the talks and bringing the world to an agreement.
Kerry took his current job during some of the dark-
est hours of the ongoing pandemic and immediately
faced a tough deadline. He spent three years rallying
the world for the Paris talks; this time around he had
only nine months before COP26. Kerry quickly adopted
the conference organizers’ aim of creating a pathway to
keep temperature rise to 1.5°C as his own. Scientists es-
timate that to have a good chance of meeting the 1.5°C
goal, global emissions would need to be sliced in half
by 2030, but a February report from the U.N. climate-
change body found that the combined climate commit-
ment from countries would barely slow emissions in
the next decade. Almost immediately, Kerry turned his
diplomatic focus to G-20 countries—which account for
more than 80% of global GDP and emit 75% of global
greenhouse gases. A September analysis from the World
Resources Institute showed that action from this group
alone could bring the world close to meeting the 1.5°C
goal. “If the 20 major emitting countries [do] all that’s
possible, then, Glasgow will be a success,” he told me
in March. “If we do our jobs, all of us, hopefully, we
can look at Glasgow and say this was a turning point.”
China, without question, was the most important
G-20 nation to pursue. The country is the world’s larg-
est emitter and second largest economy. And although
China has committed to peaking and then declining its
emissions by 2030, scientists say it needs to happen
sooner to keep the world in line with the 1.5°C goal.
From his first months as Secretary of State under
Obama, Kerry set out to build a bridge to China on cli-
mate while tensions festered on other matters, putting
the issue at the center of the relationship. In 2014, in
Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping and President
Barack Obama, with Kerry by his side, announced
agenda-setting plans to cut emissions, effectively in-
viting other countries to get on the same page. On the
back of Kerry’s climate diplomacy, Obama and Xi feted
each other a year later at a state dinner in Washington—
From left:
Kerry, with
French
President
Emmanuel
Macron;
speaking at
the Earthshot
Prize award
ceremony;
with Amazon
founder
Jeff Bezos;
addressing
the White
House
press corps
FROM LEFT: MICHEL EULER—AFP/GETTY IMAGES; YUI MOK—REUTERS; GETTY IMAGES (2)
