Former Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday called for the world to make a more concerted effort to combat climate change, saying that “if we fail, future generations will judge us all as failures, not just this president.”
Kerry writes in an op-ed for The New York Times that he was recently struck by a statement journalist Bob Woodward made about President Trump.
{mosads}”The president, [Woodward] said, ‘makes decisions often without a factual basis.’ This isn’t a mere personality quirk of the leader of the free world. It is profoundly dangerous for the entire planet,” Kerry, who has repeatedly criticized Trump during his presidency, writes.
Kerry notes how ever since Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, “those of us in the fight have worked to demonstrate that the American people are still in.”
But the onetime presidential candidate argues that the test won’t be if cities and states can make up for Trump’s “rejection of reality.”
“The test is whether the nations of the world will pull out of the mutual suicide pact that we’ve all passively joined through an inadequate response to this crisis,” he writes.
Kerry goes on to note many of the examples of the globe’s shifting climate and the damage that it has caused. He also cites new reports that warn of significant consequences to the earth’s climate in the future if problems related to it aren’t addressed.
“Every day we lose ground debating alternative facts,” he writes. “It’s not a ‘he said/she said’ — there’s truth, and then there’s Mr. Trump.”
“Future generations will measure us by whether we acted on facts, not just debated or denied them,” Kerry continues. “The verdict will hang on whether we put in place policies that will drive the development and deployment of clean technologies, re-energize our economies, and tackle global climate change. Every day that goes by that we’re paralyzed by the Luddite in the White House is a day in the future that our grandchildren will suffer.”
“That’s not hyperbole — that’s science,” he concludes, before pushing Congress to send legislation to Trump addressing the crisis.
Kerry in November said “people are going to die” because of the decision Trump made to pull the U.S. out the Paris climate agreement, a pact in which nations agreed to curb global greenhouse gas emissions through individual, nonbinding national plans.