John Kerry plans to step down from his position as President Joe Biden’s special climate envoy in late winter or early spring, a person familiar with his plans told POLITICO on Saturday.
The person was granted anonymity to discuss a move that has not been publicly announced. Kerry’s departure from the position comes just weeks after he led the U.S. negotiating team at the U.N. climate conference in Dubai, where countries for the first time agreed to work toward phasing down the use of fossil fuels in the coming decades. Carbon pollution from those fuels helped drive the world’s temperatures to the highest level in recorded history last year.
The news was first reported by Axios, which said Kerry plans to help Biden’s reelection campaign. Mitch Landrieu, Biden’s infrastructure czar, also recently announced he would leave his position to join the campaign effort.
Kerry, 80, has been a fixture in the United States’ climate diplomacy for decades. As secretary of State during the Obama administration, he helped negotiate the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, which established the framework in which countries agreed to set their own domestic targets for reducing greenhouse gas pollution. The agreement set a goal of keeping temperatures from climbing no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, as well as a more ambitious stretch target of 1.5 degrees.
He built a strong rapport with China’s lead climate negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, who is reportedly leaving his post as well. The relationship between the two veteran diplomats often yielded agreements between world’s top two greenhouse gas emitters to combat the pollution, even as they struggled to maintain momentum for tackling climate issues amid the rising tensions between Washington and Beijing.
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