Timidly optimistic words were spoken yesterday, 3 Nov, by John Kerry, U.S. Presidential Special Envoy for Climate, at a side event organized by the Aspen Institute. The beginning was very honest and transparent: “We are still at zero. Just because leaders say certain things here doesn’t mean they’re going to do them. But if they didn’t even say them we’d be sure they wouldn’t do them.”
In short, the (positive) proclamations made by. Global Leaders in the first days, about the financial resources to be dedicated to the energy transition, about the willingness to abandon coal (a one-sided statement, because it is not signed by the major coal users), all these words will have to be followed by actions. Yet they are a necessary step.
Then there was talk on the role of the U.S., whose credibility at the international level is recovering, but after abandoning first the Kyoto agreement (Bush, 2001) and then the Paris Agreement (Trump, 2017) it is not easy to propose itself as a global leader. Not least because, aside from the funds dedicated to energy transition (of which some U.S. states are indeed a vanguard), the U.S. economy is still hugely fossil-based.
And as we know, the energy transition we are being called upon to implement is not about sum of sources, but the replacement of some sources with others. Will the states have the strength to tackle this issue head-on in time according to science?
In 10 days we will discover something more.
By Renato Rallo.
John Kerry, side event at COP-26, Nov 3, 2021
