Welcome to Zero, I am Akshadrati.

This week, blame, burden and diplomacy.

John Kerry is the forest gump of climate,

the guy you'll find at every important turn in history

doing something impactful. In 1970, he was in the streets during the first Earth Day protest.

In 1992, he was at the Rio Earth Summit that created the COP meetings as we know them. And in 2016, as the US Secretary of State,

he signed the Paris Agreement with his granddaughter in his arms. But it is the last three

years between the ages of 77 and 80 that he has been fully dedicated to working on the climate

issue. And boy, what a time to get going.

In 2021, soon after he was sworn in,

President Joe Biden created a new office for Kerry

as the special presidential envoy on climate.

And his first task was to find a way to repair America's

global standing in the climate fight.

That, of course, followed a four-year absence during the time when former President Donald

Trump decided to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement and regressed on environmental policies.

The US can be rightly blamed for being the country that has put the most amount of greenhouse

gas emissions cumulatively into the atmosphere.

Even though China emits more each year today, it is the historical total that is responsible

for global warming and driving extreme weather events.

Thus, the US should carry the biggest burden in the climate fight, but it rarely does.

Trump's moves only made matters worse.

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