President-elect Joe Biden has selected former Secretary of State John Kerry to serve as his climate czar. In that role, Kerry will be responsible for negotiating new U.S. carbon emission commitments alongside those of other nations.
Kerry’s major challenge, then, will be to ensure that America does not get taken for a ride by his foreign counterparts. This is no small concern. For all its rhetoric, the European Union’s climate change policy is mostly hot air. The EU has failed to match its pledges to effected carbon emission action. As Kerry commits America to new emissions targets, he must ensure our allies actually do what they’re promising to do. If not, American businesses and individuals will suffer from the negative economic externalities of carbon emission mandates, even as their European competitors gain an unfair advantage. We must not buy into the idea that a green energy revolution is a simple ecological-economic win-win. The truth is that green energy platforms remain more expensive at both input and output price points.
