Secretary of State John Kerry will be headed toward the South Pole on Election Day for an historic visit with climate change researchers in Antarctica, his department announced Friday.
“The secretary has been wanting to get down there for a long, long time, and frankly this schedule was very literally driven by the weather,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters. “You wait much longer in the year and it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, to travel down there.”
Kerry leaves on Monday, although the logistics of traveling to Antarctica mean he won’t arrive at his primary destination until Nov. 10. (Kirby said Kerry would be out of the country on Election Day, but Kerry’s plane refuels in Hawaii on Tuesday before departing for New Zealand, so another State Department spokesperson suggested the secretary might not finally exit the United States until after the election).
He will be the first sitting secretary of state to visit the South Pole. No foreign leaders will accompany him, causing one reporter to suggest that “there’s no real, technically, diplomatic component” to the trip, but Kirby dismissed the idea that Kerry is “knock[ing] Antarctica off his bucket list” at taxpayer expense.
“He wouldn’t be making this trip, or any other trip for that matter, if he didn’t think it was important to advancing issues that are important to our national security and our foreign policy,” Kirby said.
Kerry will meet with researchers to observe their work studying melting glaciers and sea-level rise in the region, a trip that Kirby said would benefit American diplomacy when they discuss the implementation of the Paris climate agreement at an upcoming international conference.
“It’s important for him to see first-hand what we’re learning about the environment down there on the South Pole and what information we can glean from the research to make better, smarter policy decisions,” Kirby said.
The trip won’t prevent Kerry from participating in the fall election, however. Kirby said he has already voted.
Editor’s Note: This story was corrected to note that Kerry will not be at the South Pole on Election Day, but rather will be en route and will arrive on Nov. 10.
