U.S. climate envoy John Kerry warned Thursday that the transition to green energy is not happening fast enough on a global scale.
The transition to green energy needs to accelerate by a “vast amount” in order to avoid the potential effects of climate change, Kerry claimed at a climate event in Washington, D.C.
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“We can’t run around and do one bespoke deal here, another bespoke deal there — it just isn’t going to be fast enough,” Kerry said. “So, everything has to accelerate and by vast amounts. We have to be deploying renewables six times faster than we are today. We have to be deploying electric vehicles 20 times faster than we are today if you’re going to keep the Earth’s temperatures at 1.5 degrees [Celsius] of increase.
“Why is that important?” he continued, “Because every tenth of a degree above 1.5 takes you into what scientists will say is really dangerous uncharted territory, which is far more expensive to cope with.”
Kerry has been working with world leaders on climate-related issues since his appointment to the position in 2021. The United Nations‘s panel on climate change has warned that failing to stop the world from warming to preindustrial levels of 1.5 degrees could have cataclysmic consequences for the environment worldwide. Kerry has repeatedly endorsed a switch to green energy through wind or solar in order to reduce carbon emissions.
“Every economic analysis of this challenge makes it very clear it is far less expensive to be investing now, to get ahead of it, than it is to wait when you will pay untold trillions of dollars,” Kerry said. “If you think supply chains were interrupted by COVID-19, wait until you see what happens when 100 million people are moving from Africa because they can’t live there anymore.”
However, critics have warned that attempting to transition to green energy could harm developing countries.
“We’re telling developing nations that we don’t want them to go through the process of developing — we don’t want them to have coal or natural gas or even nuclear,” Daniel Turner, the executive director of Power the Future, told Fox News. “We want them to use wind and solar, which is intermittent, which is ineffective, which is incredibly cost-prohibitive. It’s the epitome of privilege. There is no greater white privilege than being a climate change activist.”
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Kerry most recently led the U.S. delegation at the COP27 summit in Egypt. The summit resulted in a new deal called the “loss and damage” fund that will assist developing nations that are vulnerable to climate change.
