John Kerry Bows Out as U.S. Climate Envoy
John Kerry at the COP26 United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2021.
John Kerry, President Biden’s special envoy for climate, plans to step down from the Biden administration by spring, according to two people familiar with his plans.
Mr. Kerry, 80, has served as the president’s top diplomat on climate change since early 2021, working to cajole governments around the world to aggressively cut their planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
He led the U.S. negotiating team through three United Nations climate summits, reasserting American leadership after the country withdrew from the Paris climate agreement during the Trump administration.
Mr. Kerry championed cooperation on global warming between the United States and China, the world’s two largest polluters, during times of tension.
On Wednesday, Mr. Kerry met with Mr. Biden in the White House to inform the president of his intention to resign, according to one person familiar with the meeting. On Saturday, his staff learned of his decision at a hastily arranged meeting, said the person, who asked to remain anonymous in order to discuss personnel matters.
Mr. Kerry told staff that he intended to depart in the coming months, and he is widely expected to get involved in the 2024 presidential campaign to help raise awareness of Mr. Biden’s work on climate change. No successor has yet been tapped.
In the meantime Mr. Kerry is planning to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, next week.
The White House didn’t respond on Saturday to a request for comment. Mr. Kerry’s plans were first reported by Axios.
A former Massachusetts senator, Democratic presidential nominee and secretary of state under President Barack Obama, Mr. Kerry brought a celebrity status to the global climate summits.
Widely regarded as a tireless crusader for climate action, Mr. Kerry traveled to 31 countries in an effort to restore confidence in the U.S. on climate change and persuade other countries to do more to help keep the average global temperature from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels. That’s the threshold beyond which scientists say the dangers of global warming — including worsening floods, droughts, wildfires and ecosystem collapse — grow considerably. Humans have already heated the planet by an average of 1.2 degrees Celsius since the 19th century, largely by burning fossil fuels.
Mr. Kerry played a key role in urging President Biden to set a more aggressive target for greenhouse gas emissions for the United States, which the president did by pledging to cut emissions roughly in half by 2030. But Mr. Kerry’s record in persuading other nations to act was mixed.
In November the United States and China agreed to jointly tackle global warming by ramping up wind, solar and other renewable energy with the goal of displacing fossil fuels. That deal was significant and came together after years of diplomacy between Mr. Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua. Yet it fell short of a promise by China to phase out its heavy use of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel or to stop building new coal plants.
Mr. Kerry’s decision to step down comes on the heels of an announcement by Mr. Xie that he, too, is retiring. That has raised concerns about what climate diplomacy between the U.S. and China will look like after the two people most eager for cooperation are gone.
The future of the climate envoy role in the United States also is uncertain.
President Biden created the role for Mr. Kerry, who worked directly for the president and wasn’t subject to Senate confirmation when he was appointed, a fact that angered many Republicans. Republican lawmakers have heavily criticized Mr. Kerry’s role and launched investigations into his contacts with environmental groups.