January 27, 2021
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0:53Now PlayingUS climate envoy John Kerry said Wednesday that Washington was rejoining the international climate effort with "humility and ambition" and was not only revving up its own efforts to reduce oil, gas and coal pollution, but that it intends to push everyone in the world to do more, too.
Speaking via video link during a virtual meeting of the World Economic Forum, Kerry stressed US President Joe Biden's commitment to climate action.
Kerry’s diplomatic efforts match the fast pace of domestic climate directives by the week-old Biden administration, which created the job Kerry now holds.
At 77, Kerry is working to make a success out of the global climate accord that he helped negotiate in Paris as President Barack Obama’s secretary of state - and that he then saw rejected by President Donald Trump, who also spurned all other Obama-era legacy efforts to wean the US and global economies off climate-damaging fossil fuels.
"We know we've wasted four years in which we were inexcusably absent," said Kerry. "But we re-enter with ambition, knowing that at the COP in Glasgow in November, all nations have to raise our sights together or we all fail together."
Success for Kerry is hardly assured.
At home, he faces pushback from the oil and gas industry and hears concerns that jobs will be lost.
Internationally, there's uncertainty about whether Biden's climate commitments can survive the United States' intensely divided politics, let alone the next presidential transition.
But Kerry insisted that Biden has made the fight against climate change "a pillar of his campaign and now a centrepiece of his presidency."
Organizers of the World Economic Forum, are holding a virtual gathering this week, after COVID-19 cancelled the forum's annual in-person event of Davos, Switzerland, with world leaders participating online.
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