John Kerry on the Battle Against Climate Change
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 2 August 2021
⏱️ 16 minutes
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Summary
With the world overheating, glaciers melting, and landscapes in flames, it’s difficult to think of a harder or more important job than John Kerry’s. The former senator and Secretary of State is now the special Presidential envoy for climate, a Cabinet-level post created by President Biden. Kerry talks with David Remnick about reasserting the United States’ fitness to lead on global climate action in the wake of Trump Administration policies, and about how to get allies and adversaries to engage in the battle together. He is heading to Glasgow for talks that aim to hold the warming level to 1.5 degrees Celsius. “Imagine what happens at 1.5, if you already see what’s happening at 1.2,” Kerry exclaims. “Is that what we want? You would think not!”
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| 1:10.9 | This is the Politics and More podcast. I'm David Remnick. |
| 1:15.8 | Some years back during the Obama administration, I spent a lot of time interviewing Secretary |
| 1:20.9 | of State John Kerry for a profile that we published at the end of 2015. He was trying to |
| 1:26.7 | talk down tensions between Israel and the |
| 1:29.3 | Palestinians and to broker a peace in Syria. Carrie seemed to relish jobs that others might think |
| 1:36.1 | absolutely impossible. He is considered relentless, I wrote in 2015, sometimes to a fault. |
| 1:43.2 | There's no concealing his eagerness to make a deal. |
| 1:46.2 | To a critic, his style is reminiscent of the customer who sternly tells the salesman, |
| 1:51.6 | I'm not leaving here until you sell me a car. But if peace in the Middle East certainly alluded |
| 1:58.0 | Kerry, his current project seems a great deal harder still. |
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