Two weeks ago, President-elect Biden announced that former Secretary of State and one-time Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry will serve as Biden’s special envoy on climate. This newly-created Cabinet position will also be part of the National Security Council, indicating that Biden believes that responding to climate change is indeed a threat to American stability. Having been the leader of the American delegation to the Paris Conference in 2015, Kerry is a logical choice for the role. But Kerry has an uphill climb not only to make significant progress on the issue internationally, but also to sell serious action to combat climate change at home.
One of the first tasks of the new administration, and perhaps of Kerry in particular, will be to undo the damage done to America’s standing in the international community by our withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. Five years ago the world, as it so often has on a broad range of issues in the past, looked to us for leadership on the most important long-term issue facing humanity this century. Presently, we are a non-participant. Kerry’s role in making the Paris Agreement happen allows him to command considerable respect beyond our borders, however, and I expect that restoring our reputation internationally will be the relatively easy part of his job. But President-elect Biden will need to get the American people to support action on climate change strongly enough that we will not tolerate another retreat on this issue, regardless of who succeeds him in the White House. And to do that, the Biden Administration will need to excel at salesmanship. It seems very likely at present that the most important salesman in this regard will be John Kerry.
An example of what Kerry needs to avoid can be seen in an exchange he made in Congress last year with Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky. To put it mildly, Massie’s line of questioning was idiotic. He referred to political science as a “pseudoscience,” and then proceeded to ask some questions concerning geology that would be acceptable coming from somebody with a pre-middle school level of education, not a Congressman who has been tasked by voters to make serious decisions on serious issues. I need to point out here that Massie’s educational background is not the problem – he has multiple engineering degrees from MIT, so it’s not that he should know better, he does know better. But this is the country we live in right now. A particular facet of science is overwhelmingly accepted by the people who study it the most closely – i.e., the people from whom Kerry got his data – but the public at large is confused and misled about it by people whose motivations are selfish at best and genuinely malevolent at worst. Massie’s intent that day was to rattle Kerry, and he succeeded. Sure, Massie got skewered in the media outlets where you would expect him to get skewered, but Kerry lost his composure, and with it the chance to change even a few minds. If and when Kerry gets the opportunity to go back to Congress in his new role, he will need to do better than that.
Unfortunately, it’s not really clear how much “better than that” Kerry needs to be to make a difference. John Holdren, the Obama Administration’s science advisor, did a superior job handling similarly cringeworthy questions in this Congressional briefing from 2014, but he does not appear to have swayed the argument any either. (The linked clip is from The Daily Show; you do not have to like Jon Stewart’s snark, but ask yourself if you really want that quality of questioning coming from the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.) Perhaps there is not much point in making a persuasive argument directly to Republicans in Congress, because it won't go anywhere. But Kerry, and obviously his boss as well, will still need to sell action on climate change to the American people. Some Americans might honestly have questions similar to the ones that these Congressmen had, because either their schools did not teach them adequately on this or because their education has been buried under misinformation coming from people who stand to further profit from inaction on global warming.
Kerry has to be willing to patiently answer those questions. For example, carbon dioxide levels have certainly been higher in the distant past than they are now. And temperatures have gone up with carbon dioxide. And sea levels have gone up with remperatures. The last time the Earth was this warm, sea levels were 6 to 9 meters (20 to 30 feet) higher than they are now. And the last time the Earth was 3ºC warmer than pre-Industrial levels, which we’ll easily reach by 2100 if we do nothing, the Earth had sea levels 20 to 25 meters (65 to 80 feet) higher than they are now. Life existed and did well enough under those conditions, but most of humanity’s population and infrastructure can be found near the world’s coasts. Where will they go, and who will foot the bill? Furthermore, excepting occasional major volcanic eruptions which can significantly but temporarily lower temperatures globally, geology works on much greater time scales than half a century; global temperatures have risen nearly 1ºC since 1970, and the rate of increase is accelerating. Plus we can monitor the location of greenhouse gases more than well enough to isolate the major sources, so there really is no doubt where the added carbon dioxide is coming from.
In addition, Kerry needs to be willing to put himself in places where people will ask those questions. He may even need to visit communities that might be affected adversely, at least in the short term, by actions that a serious effort to combat global warming will necessitate. And he’ll need to have good answers for some harder questions when he does.
