America’s new climate envoy John Kerry has called for countries to phase out coal five times faster than they have been, and to speed up the transfer to renewable energy in order to hit net zero global carbon emissions by 2050.
After officially taking up his role on Wednesday, Kerry posted on Twitter to express his intention to get to work ahead of the COP26 Climate Change Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, later this year.
Speaking at an online event on Thursday, Kerry outlined some key climate change issues and concerns for meeting existing emissions targets, which he said will require the phasing out of coal at a faster rate and the rapid speeding up of the transfer to renewable sources of energy. Raising the stakes for a new collective international agreement, Kerry declared that “failure at the COP in Glasgow is not an option” if the world is to successfully achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, as previously planned.
In order to meet the targets, Kerry is set to propose a radical transformation of both the American economy and the global system to tackle companies that contribute to pollution and the negative effects of climate change.
His comments come hours after newly inaugurated President Joe Biden signed an executive order to reverse the Trump administration’s actions and re-admit the US to the Paris Climate Agreement, in a bid to set “a floor, not a ceiling, for our climate leadership.”
Kerry, who served as secretary of state under Barack Obama, has been a vocal advocate for taking stronger action against climate change for years, as well as being America’s representative in 2016 at the Paris Climate Conference and signing the agreement on behalf of the US.
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