According to United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, no future American President can walk back from climate change commitments now. Mr. Kerry has blamed former U.S. President Donald Trump for walking out on the Paris agreement and rescinding climate financing offers. In an interview to The Hindu, Mr. Kerry, who is in India for a G20 meeting on climate change issues, said he was still hopeful about a consensus statement, but wouldn’t commit to the U.S. compromising over language on the Ukraine war in order to reach such a consensus.
How far along are talks on climate change ahead of the G20 summit, and particularly since we’re a couple of months away from the CoP28 meeting in Dubai?
On the CoP28, I think that the parties are working hard, meeting pretty regularly and a considerable amount of progress has been made. There are three outcomes that are already predetermined: we have to have a stocktaking; we have to have an adaptation report. And in addition, we have a loss and damage fund that’s been created that has to now take shape. So, those are three already in the pipeline. Because of what’s happening in the planet — and the science and evidence, we have an imperative to try to raise ambition, speed and quantity. And we have an imperative to try to establish a better finance track in order for emerging economies and less developed countries to be able to make the transition. So it’s a big agenda.
We had an excellent meeting between Prime Minister [Modi] and President [Biden] in June that really set the stage for a level of cooperation that will make a difference. I think that India and the United States really have a synergy right now. Recognising that we need to push technologies, we need to reduce greenhouse gas pollution as rapidly as we can. We need to improve our supply chains, particularly, so that we’re not being held hostage by any place in the world. And I think that there was a real understanding between Prime Minister Modi and President Biden, about the commonality of the agenda and the way they see the world.
What does that mean in climate terms? India, for example, has not accepted a mid-Century Net Zero target. Prime Minister Modi himself has only spoken about 2070 so far...
Well, I think India is showing a great deal of ambition. India has of its own volition set a very ambitious goal of deploying 500 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030. That’s a big goal. And we’re very supportive of that. We’ve invested very heavily in a new solar plant that’s here in India. I think our leaders agreed that it would be really good for us to be able to come to agreement on a national fund that we’re both contributing to in order to accelerate the transition. I think that there are great skill sets in India with respect to technology, science, research and development. And we see some really, very positive ways in which we’re able to cooperate to bring new technologies to scale, whether it’s hydrogen or battery storage, turbines, solar panels. This transition does not have to be frightening to people. It is an exciting moment where there’s more economic opportunity globally than there has been since the industrial revolution in the 1800s.
That’s on a bilateral scale. But when it comes to the multilateral, India is part of the developing world, the U.S. is part of the developed world. What is the U.S. willing to pay to the Loss and Damage Fund? I ask this because, earlier, there was a U.S. commitment to help raise $100 billion every year, between 2020 and 2025. We haven’t seen that come through yet.
The reason we haven’t seen it yet is that we had a President [Trump] who pulled out of the Paris agreement a number of years ago, and who didn’t put any money into the Climate Fund. So, when President Biden [took charge], he began the first year of his presidency with Donald Trump’s budget, not his own. He didn’t get to do his own budget until last year, and now this is his second budget. And we do have money in there to be able to try to reach the $100 billion. That’s a real obligation that the United States obviously will make good on. And the President has been very clear about that.
