Kerry: Stakes for climate ‘as high as they can get’ in 2024 election

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry confirmed Wednesday he is departing his position to work on President Biden’s reelection campaign, emphasizing the stakes for climate policy in the election.

Kerry, speaking with BloombergTV at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said the stakes for the 2024 election are “as high as they can get,” despite skepticism about Biden among younger, climate-focused voters, who polling shows are increasingly leery of the president’s age and his policies on the Israel-Hamas war. 

Former President Trump, the GOP front-runner, spent his first term rolling back numerous Obama-era environmental safeguards and withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, which Biden reentered in 2021. Trump has also pledged to step up fossil fuel development if he wins a second term and has falsely claimed climate change is a “hoax.”

However, Kerry expressed confidence that private enterprise would continue its trajectory toward renewable energy regardless of who is in power.

“General Motors and Ford and Mercedes and Volkswagen and Hyundai and Toyota, these companies have all spent billions of dollars retooling their plans,” he said. “Whoever the president of the United States is, those CEOs are not suddenly going to go back.”

At Davos, Kerry confirmed weekend reports that he will step back from his position as climate envoy to work on Biden’s reelection campaign, citing the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees from engaging in campaigning.

Kerry also addressed the fact that despite Biden’s ambitious goals for greenhouse gas emission reductions, the U.S. has reached an all-time high for oil production under his administration.

“It’s a policy necessity — you obviously can’t shut down the economies of the world — you have to try to keep the economy stable and keep the price low enough that you don’t have revolutions in countries all around the world because gas prices are $10,” Kerry said. “But that has to be accompanied by a very clear set of policies that are moving in the direction of this transition away from fossil fuels.”

“If we don’t do that, that is a mistake and that contributes to the problem,” he added.