During a visit to his home state, John Kerry was the country’s first climate envoy. He told people not to be divided by the threat of climate change.
“This is a question of physics and mathematics, not politics or ideology,” Kerry said Thursday at MIT. However, we are trapped in a situation where ideology is interfering, where our nation’s polarisation is impeding us from doing what we know we must do. And history will judge us harshly if we do not find a way out of this maze immediately. “
Former Massachusetts Democratic Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry paid a visit to the Cambridge campus as part of the showcase event for the Climate Grand Challenges. Following Kerry’s remarks, MIT researchers convened to discuss the climate crisis.
Kerry attributed the climate change pause to global divisions.
“Some of these people are impossible to communicate with. When I was in Russia, I accomplished a great deal with President Putin. We removed chemical weapons from Syria, we negotiated the Iran nuclear deal, and we negotiated the Paris agreement, “he stated. “Right now, this is a very different moment and a very different person, and with the Russians off the table for the time being, that’s a problem.
Despite the government’s need to spend “trillions” to save the earth, he believes it will be unable to do so.
“When I stepped down as Secretary of State, I believed that the private sector would solve the problem,” he explained. “I continue to believe that the market will be far more effective at resolving this than the government.”
He said that a lot of businesses are trying to buy green technology as an example of how to do this.
“The issue is that it is not occurring quickly enough,” he explained. And this is where the government enters the picture. Governments can send signals, they can build structures, and you can build around them and move much more quickly. “
