At a news presser on Wednesday in China, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC) John Kerry said that his trip had not led to any significant climate accord.
Kerry told the press that he and his Chinese colleagues had candid conversations about combating climate change but could not establish an official agreement. He noted that more time is needed to negotiate a climate accord with the United States and China, the world’s two major polluters. Kerry ignored India, a major polluter of the planet.
While in Beijing, Kerry remarked that he was in Beijing “to unstick” what has been “stuck for almost a year.”
He said the aim is to go forward, but we’ll need to put in more time and energy to achieve that goal, but we still think it’s possible. In other words, nothing happened.
The “climate czar” has said the United States and China will negotiate expeditiously in the following weeks and months.
Kerry remarked that they were not yet done figuring out how to go where they needed to go with mutual clarity.
Approximately a year had passed since climate negotiations between the two countries had halted owing to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s travel to Taiwan before Kerry’s trip to China and consultations with Chinese officials. In May, Kerry’s staff secretly resumed climate negotiations with China, and the State Department acknowledged that he would be traveling to China soon for in-person consultations.
Kerry has met with his Chinese colleagues on many occasions since becoming SPEC, the most recent of which was in 2021. Kerry told CNBC at an April 2021 regional climate forum that the attention paid to climate change wasn’t limited to China.
Top Republican senators have voiced worries about Kerry’s role in the Biden administration and his discussions with China on behalf of the United States. Kerry was selected by President Biden in 2021 to be the Special Presidential Envoy for Cyberspace (SPEC), a post that did not exist before, did not need Senate confirmation, and gave him a seat on the President’s cabinet and National Security Council.
According to a statement by House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky, earlier this week, John Kerry is negotiating with the Chinese Communist Party to advance a radical, Green New Deal agenda that is harmful to American interests despite not having been confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Republican New York Representative Elise Stefanik said the Biden administration’s efforts to accommodate Communist China “were pitiful.”
