AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, kicks off today in Belem, Brazil. The city is known as the gateway to the Amazon, and tens of thousands of environmentalists, diplomats and journalists are expected to gather there. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has opted not to send any high-ranking representatives. The U.S. is one of the biggest climate polluters historically and is currently No. 2 behind China. We're joined now by former Secretary of State John Kerry. He was also a special presidential envoy for climate under President Biden. Welcome back to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
JOHN KERRY: Thank you. I'm delighted to be with you.
CHANG: It's great to have you. I want to talk about leadership because President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement again, and this administration will not be sending any high-level delegation to COP30, as we mentioned. What impact do you think that will have with the U.S. taking such a noticeable step back here?
KERRY: I think it has a profoundly negative impact. It has real effect in my experience. And I have been to COPs from 1992 - most of them - through Dubai, and everybody left Dubai with the most powerful, most clear mission statement of any of the COPs that have taken place. It said specifically that we must transition away from fossil fuel so as to achieve net-zero emissions by 2030, 2050. And it also said we must accelerate in this decade. Now, that COP called for a tripling of the deployment of nuclear, a doubling of energy efficiency, a tripling of the deployment of renewables. And people just aren't doing it. So we need people - leaders - who are going to stand up and demand that people do the things they were going to do, that they take action, but you can't do that if you're not doing it yourself.
CHANG: When you say we need people, we need leaders, I mean, to be sure, there are dozens of U.S. governors, mayors and local officials attending COP30. How much do you think they can orchestrate meaningful change on climate without national U.S. leadership?
KERRY: I think they can have real impact. I think it's very important. The movement of We Are Still In is something that we started after President Trump first pulled out of Paris in his first term, and it had an effect. I mean, 75% of the new electricity that came online during the Trump first four years came from renewables. And the fact is that we have renewable portfolio laws in the United States that require governors and mayors to take action. So it does have effect for people to be there and to be pushing. But there's no way for them individually, even as a group, to have the full effect of the United States of America stepping up and saying, here is what we're going to do, and to have the year preceding this meeting worked at - having diplomats and others traveling the world, asking people, working with people, the Energy Department, the EPA. All of these entities could have been allies in building the effort necessary to get the job done rather than, frankly, making themselves enemies of the effort.
CHANG: How much hope do you have to see leadership from other countries? Because last week, leading up to COP30, EU countries agreed on their climate targets for 2040, and some experts have described their agreement as backsliding on climate action. What did you...
KERRY: Yes.
CHANG: ...Make of their goals?
KERRY: I think the NDCs, which are the nationally determined contributions - what people are agreeing to do in order to reduce emissions - are palpably weak, almost pathetic in some cases, and really injurious to this effort. They just run contrary. They're not keeping faith with the prior meetings, with Paris, Glasgow, Sharm el-Sheikh and ultimately Dubai. They're just not keeping faith with it. And the only way we win this battle is if we have the biggest emitters of pollution - of greenhouse gases - in the world joining up to say this is what we're going to do, and they make genuine efforts to get it done.
CHANG: So it sounds like you do not believe current efforts are enough to slow down climate change, enough to prevent even worse catastrophes than what we're seeing now. Am I stating your position correctly?
KERRY: They can slow down a little bit here and a little bit there some of the wreckage that is being done, but are they on track to achieve our goals? Will they prevent the worst damage from occurring? The answer is no. Not at the current rate.
CHANG: You know, it was just - what? - a decade ago that you sat at the U.N. with your granddaughter on your lap signing the Paris climate agreement. What is your message for your granddaughter today and others who are her age who are really concerned about climate change and see a gross lack of political leadership on this issue? What do you say to her?
KERRY: That we have to keep fighting and that we're making progress in many different sectors. We need to speed up that progress. I'm actually - I'm optimistic. I'm very excited about what we can get done. And we need to minimize the barriers that are put in the way of getting those things done. For instance, we have massive new capacity to send electricity to places we didn't before. We have better transmission lines, better transformers. We have incredible opportunities to deploy new technologies, whether it's geothermal or - hopefully, 'cause we're not there yet - one of the other technologies that's being worked on with respect to nuclear production.
CHANG: How do you persuade the current administration to get on board with your enthusiasm and hope?
KERRY: Well, I'm not banking on that right now. What I'm banking on is showing people that the transition to a clean energy economy is, in fact, the greatest economic opportunity the world has ever known. There are 8 billion people who want electricity, need electricity in the world today - 1 billion of them actually don't have it yet - and it's going to go up to 10 billion in the next 20 or 30 years. So that's a huge marketplace. We have technologies that work. We know how to do this. So I think from a security point of view, economic point of view - jobs, income, health - there are profound reasons to be exciting this movement to the new economy. And by the way, the best of capitalism - you can make a lot of money as that transition is implemented.
CHANG: That's a good reminder. Former Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking to us on the first day of COP30, the U.N. Climate Change Conference. Thank you very much for joining us.
KERRY: Pleasure to be with you. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF ALEX VAUGHN SONG, "SO BE IT") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
