But while the public’s attention has been on his diplomacy in the Middle East, behind the scenes at the State Department Mr. Kerry has initiated a systematic, top-down push to create an agencywide focus on global warming. His goal is to become the lead broker of a global climate treaty in 2015 that will commit the United States and other nations to historic reductions in fossil fuel pollution.
The story by Coral Davenport notes that as Senator and so far as Secretary of State, John Kerry has a long record of commitment on addressing climate crisis but with only a short list of successes. However, there is one potentially significant one recently:
As a result of midlevel talks Mr. Kerry set up to pave the way for a 2015 deal, the United States and China agreed in September to jointly phase down production of hydrofluorocarbons, greenhouse gases used in refrigerators and air-conditioners.
“He’s pushing to get climate to be the thing that drives the U.S. relationship with China,” said Timothy E. Wirth, a former Democratic senator from Colorado who now works on climate change issues with the United Nations Foundation.
China is making some moves on climate issues, including an internal cap and trade scheme (not noted in this story.) If the two biggest greenhouse gases polluters in the world can work together on this issue, it could well have a positive effect globally. It's still a long shot but there's that possibility.
Institutional change in Washington is often slow, but it does often start at the top. A new emphasis on climate began in the Energy department in 2008, and in the EPA arguably a few years later. Those changes as they work their way through the bureaucracy now make it possible for enforcing as well as creating rules regulating greenhouse gases produced for power generation.
Now Kerry is changing State:
Shortly after Mr. Kerry was sworn in last February, he issued a directive that all meetings between senior American diplomats and top foreign officials include a discussion of climate change. He put top climate policy specialists on his State Department personal staff. And he is pursuing smaller climate deals in forums like the Group of 20, the countries that make up the world’s largest economies.
Other nations are taking notice, the story says, and it details John Kerry's unbroken series of efforts to address the climate crisis, some including his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, whose own advocacy on this issue predates their marriage.
With John Kerry at the helm of the State Department to deal with other nations, and now John Podesta in the White House to encourage domestic action, it could be that in the next two years, even against overwhelming odds, the fight for the future may be truly engaged. Davenport's story notes:
It has not gone unnoticed that this administration is now much more engaged on climate change,” said Jake Schmidt, the international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Every international negotiator understands it.” When Mr. Kerry took office, Mr. Schmidt said, “The dynamic changed quite a bit.”
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