My name is Elise Hu. This is Ted Talks daily since the United States is rejoining the Paris climate agreement today, we've got a big conversation for you on one of the most crucial issues facing humanity.

On today's show here, the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, John Kerry, in conversation with climate advocate Al Gore about the make or break decade ahead of us. They cover the global challenges and what exactly needs to be done to curb emissions and reduce warming. You'll also hear an introduction from Christiana Figueres, the principal architect of the Paris agreement. This interview is part of Countdown, Ted's new global initiative to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. Get involved at Countdown.

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Think of your smartphone with all your apps right at your fingertips. ODU is just like that for business, but instead of an app to order takeout or tell you the weather, you have sales, inventory, accounting and more all on ODU, you name the department. We've got it covered and they are all connected. So go to ODU Dotcom slash Ted to start a free trial. That's o d o dotcom Ted. Today, 19th of February, twenty twenty one at the beginning of a crucial year and a crucial decade for confronting the climate crisis, the United States rejoins the Paris climate agreement after four years of absence unanimously adopted by 195 nations.

The Paris agreement came into force in 2016, establishing targets and mechanisms to lead the global economy to a zero emissions future. It was one of the most extraordinary examples of multilateralism ever, and one which I had the privilege to coordinate. One year later, the United States withdrew. The Biden Harris administration is now bringing the United States back and has expressed strong commitment to responsible climate action. The two men you are about to see both played essential roles in birthing the Paris agreement in 2015.

Former Vice President Al Gore, a lifelong climate expert, made key contributions to the diplomatic process. John Kerry was the U.S. secretary of state and head of the U.S. delegation with his granddaughter sitting on his lap. He signed the Paris Agreement on behalf of the United States. He is now the U.S. special envoy for climate. Ted Countdown has invited Al Gore to interview John Kerry as he begins his new role over to both of them. Well, thank you, Cristiana and John Kerry, thank you so much for doing this interview.

I have to say on a personal basis, I was just absolutely thrilled when President Biden, then president elect, announced you were going to be taking on this incredibly important role. And thank you for doing it. Let me just start by welcoming you to head count down and asking you, how are you feeling as you step back into the middle of this issue that has been close to your heart for so long?

Well, I feel safer being here with you that I honestly I feel very energized, very focused. I think it's a privilege to be able to take on this task. And as you know better than anybody, it's going to take everybody coming together. There's going to have to be a massive movement of people to do what we have to do. So I just I feel privileged to be part of it and I'm honored to be here with you on this important day.

Well, it's been a privilege to be able to work with a dear friend for so long on this crisis. And, of course, on this historic day when the United States now formally and legally rejoins the Paris agreement, we have to acknowledge that the world is lagging behind the pace of change needed to successfully confront the climate crisis, because even if all countries kept the commitments made under the Paris agreement and I watched you sign it, you had your grandchild with you.

I was there at the U.N. That was an inspiring moment you signed on behalf of the United States. But even if all of those pledges were capped, they're not strong enough to to to keep the global temperature increase well below two degrees or below one point five degrees and emissions are still rising. So what needs to happen here in the US and globally in order to accelerate the pace of change?

Well, you're absolutely correct. It's a very significant day, a day that never had to happen. America returning to this agreement. It is so sad that our previous president, without any scientific basis, without any legitimate economic rationale, decided to pull America out. And it hurt us and it hurt the world. Now we have an opportunity to try to make that up. And I approach that job with a lot of humility for the for the agony of the last four years of not moving faster.

But we have to we have to simply up our ambition on a global basis where the United States is 15 percent of all the emissions, China is 30 percent use somewhere around 14, 11. Depends who you talk to. And India is about seven. So you add all those together, just four entities, and you've got well over 60 percent of all the emissions in the world. And yet none of those nations are at this moment doing enough to be able to get done what has to be done, let alone many others, at lower levels of emission.

It's going to take all of us, even if tomorrow China went to zero where the United States went to zero, you know full well now we're still not going to get there. We all have to be reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We have to do it much more rapidly. So the meeting in Glasgow rises in its importance. You and I, we've been to these meetings since way back in the beginning of the nineties with Rio and even before some of them parliamentary meetings.

And and we're at this most critical moment where we have a capacity to define the decade of the 20s, which will really make or break us in our ability to get to a 20, 50 net zero carbon economy. And and so we all have to raise our ambition. That means coal has got to phase down faster. It means we've got to deploy renewables, all forms of alternative, renewable, sustainable energy. We've got to push the curve of discovery intensely.

Whether we get the hydrogen economy or battery storage or any number of technologies, we are going to have to have an all of the above approach to getting where we need to go to meet the target in this next 10 years. And I think Glasgow has to not only have countries come and raise ambition, but those countries are going to have to define in real terms what their roadmap is for the next 10 years, then the next 30 years, so that we're really talking a reality that we've never been able to completely assemble at any of these meetings thus far.

Well, hearing you talk, John. Just highlights how painful it's been for the US to be absent from the international effort for the last four years, and again, it makes me so happy. President Biden has brought us back into the Paris agreement after this four year hiatus. How how are you personally as our climate envoy planning to approach re-entry into the conversation? I know you've already started it, but is there anything tricky about that? Or I guess everything is tricky about it, but how are you planning to do it?

Well, I'm planning, first of all, to do it with humility, because I think it's not appropriate for the United States to leap back in and start telling everybody what has to happen. We have to listen. We have to work very, very closely with other countries, many of whom have been carrying, carrying the load for the last four years in the absence of the United States. I don't think we come in at all. I want to emphasize this.

I don't believe we come to the table with our heads hanging down on behalf of of many of our own efforts, because, as you know, President Obama worked very hard and we all did, together with you and others, to get the Paris agreement. And we also have thirty eight states in America that have passed renewable portfolio laws. And during the four years of Trump being out, the governors of those thirty eight states, Republican and Democrat alike, continued to push forward in the we're still in movement.

And more than a thousand mayors, mayors of our biggest cities in America all have forged ahead. So it's not a totally, abjectly miserable story by the United States. I think we can come back and earn our credibility by stepping up in the next month or two with a strong national determined contribution. We're going to have a summit in April, April. Twenty second. That summit will bring together the major emitting nations of the world again. And because, as you recall in Paris, a number of nations felt left out of the conversation.

The island states some of the poorer nations, Bangladesh, others. And so we're going to bring those stakeholders to the table, as well as the big emitters and developed countries so that they can be heard from the get go. And as we head on into Glasgow, hopefully we'll be building a bigger momentum and we'll have a larger consensus. And that's our goal, to have the summit raise ambition, announce our national determined contribution, begin to break ground on entirely new initiatives, build towards the biodiversity convention in China.

Even though we're not a party, we want to be helpful and then go into the G seven, the G20, the UNGA, the meeting of the United Nations in the fall reconvene and re energize going for the last six weeks into Glasgow. In my judgment, Glasgow and you know this full well. I think Glasgow is the last, best hope we have for our nations to really set us on that path. And so, you know, one key is, as I said, raising ambition.

The other is defining how are you going to get there? And then the third is finance. We've got to bring an unprecedented global finance plan to the table. And I think we're already working with private sector entities. I believe there's a way to to do that in a very exciting way. Well, that's encouraging.

And I'm going to come back to that in just a moment. But I'm glad you made those points about state and local governments actually moving forward during the last four years. A lot of us private companies have as well. And already I'm extremely encouraged by the suite of executive actions that President Biden has already taken during his first weeks in office. And there's more to come. There's also a push for legislative action to invest in the fantastic new opportunities in clean energy, electric vehicles and more.

Yet you and I have both seen the difficulties of this approach in the past. How can we use all of this activity to well and truly convince the world that America is genuinely back to being part of the solution? I know we are. You know we are, but we've got to really restore that confidence. I think your appointment went a long way to doing that. But what else can we do to gain back the world's confidence?

Well, we have to be we have to be honest and forthright and direct about the things that we're prepared to do. And they have to be things we're really going to do. We just held a meeting a few days ago with all of the domestic entities that President Biden has ordered to come to the table and be part of this effort. This is an all of government effort now. So we will have the Energy Department, the Homeland Security Department, the Defence Department, the Treasury.

I mean, Janet Yellen was there talking about how she's going to work and we're going to work together to try to mobilise some of the finance. So I think, you know, we're not going to convince anybody by just saying it, nor should we. We have to do it. And I think the actions that we put together shortly after. President Biden achieves the covid legislation here, he will almost immediately introduce the rebuild effort, the infrastructure components, and those will be very much engaged in building out America's grid capacity, doing things that we should have done years ago to facilitate the transmission of electricity from one part of the country to another, whether it's renewable or otherwise.

We just don't have that ability. Now we have a queue of backed up projects sitting in one of our regulatory agencies which have got to be broken free. And by creating this all of government effort, well, our hope is we're really going to be able to do that. The other thing that we're doing is I'm reaching out very rapidly to my colleagues all around the world. We've had meetings already, discussions with India, with Latin American countries, with European countries, with the European Commission and others.

And we're going to try to build as much energy and momentum as possible towards these various benchmarks that I've talked about. And it's only I mean, the proof will be in the pudding. We're going to have to show people that we've got a strong in D.C. We're actually implementing we're passing legislation and we're moving forward in a collegiate manner with other countries around the world. For instance, I've talked to Australia. We a very good conversation. Australia has had some differences with us.

We've not been able to get on the same page completely. That was one of the problems in Madrid, as you recall, together with Brazil. Well, I've reached out to Brazil already. We're starting to work on that. My hope is that we can build some new coalitions and approach this, hopefully in a new way.

Well, that's exciting. And I do agree with your statement earlier that the the top twenty six conference in Glasgow this fall may be the world's last, best chance. I like your phrase there. From your perspective, what would you list as the priorities for ensuring that this Glasgow conference is a success?

I think that perhaps one of the single most important things, which is why we're focused on this summit of ours, is to get the 17 nations that produced the vast majority of emissions on the same page of committing to twenty 50 net zero, committing to this decade, having a road map that is going to lay down, how they are going to accelerate the reduction of emissions in a way that keeps one point five degrees as a as a floor alive and also in a way that guarantees that we are seeing the roadmap to get to net zero.

I will personally be dissatisfied, disappointed if for our children's sake and our and our grandkids sake. We can't say that when these adults came together to make this kind of a decision, we we didn't actually make it. We've got to make it. And I think if we can show people we're actually on the road, I think you believe this as much as I do that that I mean, you're even you're far more knowledgeable than I am about some of the technologies and you've helped break ground on some of them.

The pace at which we are now beginning to accelerate, I mean, the reduction in cost of solar, the movement and in storage and other kinds of things, I'm convinced we're going to find one breakthrough or another. I don't know what is going to be, but I do know that when we push the curve and we put the resources to work, the innovative creative capacity of humankind is such that we have an ability to surprise ourselves. We've always done it when we went to the moon and that's exactly what we did.

And people today use products in everyday household use that came out of that quest that you never would have anticipated. That's what's going to happen now. We can move faster to electric vehicles. No question in my mind, we could absolutely phase down coal fired emissions faster than we are in a plan to do it. So the available choices are there. The test is going to be whether we create the energy and momentum necessary to actually get those choices made.

One of the big challenges is one you referred to earlier on finance. Wealthy countries have promised financial assistance to the less wealthy countries to help them out with cutting emissions and to help them cope with the impacts of the climate crisis. But of course, we need to continue to work to meet this commitment, especially as countries around the world rebuild their economies in the wake of this pandemic. What are some of the most effective ways and. Which the wealthier countries can help those that don't have as many resources and and why is this so important for the world to move forward?

Let me answer the last part first. It's so important because it's the only way we're going to get there. I don't believe that any government has either the money or the inclination to be able to do what's necessary here. I believe the private sector, particularly driven by venture capital investment, by the quest to be able to create a product that then can help create wealth and actually provide a benefit to humankind drives a lot of things that we've done all through history.

And I don't think it'll be any different now. I think the question is, can we pull together enough nations to leverage a a uniform approach to the judgment about the kinds of investments that are being made. And I believe that if we can standardize to some degree with disclosure requirements, which Janet Yellen is now, she's seized of that issue. And Europe, there are there are folks working on that and European Commission elsewhere. If we could actually find a way to come together and harmonize some of those definitions and the marketplace begins to make those judgments as they qualify.

Risk looking way out risk because of climate crisis for investing is very, very real. And we all understand that we spent two hundred and sixty five billion dollars in America two years ago just cleaning up after three storms, Maria, Harvey and Irma. And it's crazy. You spend two hundred and sixty five billion to clean up after the storms, but we can't put one hundred billion together for the Green Climate Fund. That's what this year has to be about.

We've got to break that cycle. And I think business I'm convinced of this. A lot of people will doubt me and say, have I lost my mind? But I'm convinced the private sector is going to be critical, if not the key to helping to make this happen. And that will leverage other money. We've I've talked to the to the IMF. We'll be talking with the World Bank. We're going to try to bring our other our own finance development corporation in America.

All of these things can help leverage investment into the sectors that can make the greatest difference to the rapid reduction of greenhouse gases. And I think people are going to get very excited about where this money is going to go and how much it is going to be. And my hope is in a matter of weeks to be in a position to make a couple of announcements with respect to that that could be helpful in building some of this momentum. Well, that's great.

It sounds like some major news coming in a couple of weeks and just one example on the example you use to the point about businessmen, I have a friend in Australia, Mike Cannon-Brookes, building a long undersea cable from the northern territories of Australia to take renewable electricity to Singapore, who have made the point about the need for the US to approach this with humility a number of times in that spirit. What lessons can a country like ours learn from some of the lower income nations that are already beginning to tackle climate change?

Well, I think one of the most important things now is to make sure that central to this transformation, to this transition to the new energy economy, central to it is environmental justice, is that we don't leave people behind, that we're not making whole communities, the recipients of the downside of some particular choice, that the diesel trucks, for instance, aren't all being routed through a particular low income community that doesn't have the ability to make a different political decision.

I think it is vital for the developed world to recognise that there are nations one hundred and thirty eight nations or more way below one percent in terms of emissions. And they're looking around some of them, like Tommy Remen Gonzales, the president of Palau, who no longer can consider adaptation. He's got to figure out where his people are going to go live, as do other very low lying areas in the ocean. So that that impact on people is really not known by the vast majority of people who live pretty good lives and a lot of countries in the world.

And we have a responsibility to make sure that we're learning the lesson of their lives and their hopes and aspirations here.

Couldn't agree more. And here in the US, if we had paid more attention to the differential impact on black, brown and indigenous communities, we would have had a better early warning of what the whole country was facing. But let me shift subjects and ask you about China. I know that you, as you are close friends with Gen Y as I have been over the years. And I was very happy when he was brought out of retirement to play the lead role for them.

But the US is now in the middle of a somewhat contentious relationship with China. But successfully solving the climate crisis is going to require collaboration between the US and China, where the two biggest emitters and the two biggest economies. How can this collaboration be shaped, in your view? I know you played a role, as Joe Biden did before the Paris Agreement in getting our two countries together. Can we do that again?

I hope so. I really do hope so. Now, as you just said, if we can't I mean, if we don't get China to be cooperating and partnering with the rest of the world on this, we don't solve the problem. And we unfortunately, we see too much investment in China right now in coal. Still, we've had some conversations about it. I was on a panel with Shenzhen mayor several months before the election by the University of California, and we had a very constructive conversation.

My hope is that that will continue and can continue and that China will be just as constructive, if not more so, in this endeavor than they were in twenty thirteen as we began the process to build up to Paris. Well, that that relationship is absolutely crucial. But in order to cover all the ground, I want to cover here, let me shift again and ask you, what role do you expect that big corporations and also smaller businesses will play in moving this green transition forward?

I think they're the biggest single players in it. I mean, governments are important and governments can and have made a difference with tax credits. For instance, our solar tax credit made an enormous difference and it will make one going forward. And even in the middle of covid, we've been able to hold on to that. But we need to grow those kinds of efforts. But in the end, it's not going to be government cash that makes this happen.

It's going to be the private sector investment that is coming in because it's the right thing to do, because it's also smart investing. And the truth is, you can talk to many of the and you have you're one of the investors actually out. You you and others have proven that you can invest in this sector of dealing with climate or environment or sustainability, whether it's ESG or it's pure climate. There are ways to have a good return on money.

And during the last couple of years, we had something like 13 to 17 trillion dollars sitting in parked banking situations around the world in net negative interest. In other words, they were paying for the privilege of sitting there, not not invested in something. And so I think there's just a massive opportunity here. And most of the CEOs I am talking to, at least now, are increasingly aware of the potential of these alternatives. And you I mean, you were in early, I think.

I don't know if you invested in it or not, but I know you're involved with Tesla have been I mean, Tesla is the most highly valued automobile company in the world. And it only makes one thing, electric car. If that isn't a message to people, I don't know what is.

I wish I had invested in Tesla, John, but I'm a huge fan of Elon Musk and what he's doing. I'm also a huge fan of gratitude beer. And I'm just curious what you think in practical terms is the real impact for change coming from these youth movements like Friday's for the future?

I think it's been gigantic and spectacular and in the best traditions of what young people do and have done historically. I mean, as you recall, in America, at least in the nineteen sixties, it was young people who drove the environment movement, the peace movement, the women's movement, the civil rights movement, and they were willing to put their lives on the line. And Greta has been just unbelievable. And in the way in which she has held adults accountable and it has created this wonderful movement.

I've met so many young people, many of whom have worked in one fashion or another with me in the last few years who were brought to it from Friday's for the future, from the Sunrise movement, or, you know, it's all that focused youthful idealism and energy and it demands to be heard. And I think all of us I mean, we should be ashamed of ourselves that we have to have people who were then 16 or 15 not going to school to get our attention.

I mean, what the hell is the matter with adult leadership? That's not leadership at all. So I salute her and all the young people who put themselves on the line. And I but I invite them, you know, it's not enough. You've got to then and I said this during the course of the election where I hope we created a lot of new voters. And I think environment, specifically climate crisis, became a real voting issue this year, just as it was back in 1970 when we created the EPA and the Clean Air Act and a host of things.

And it proves that that kind of activism is necessary. And I hope we're going to keep young people at the table here and finish the job. That's the key now.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And another big movement that's having an impact is the environmental justice movement. You referred to it earlier. And I'm so glad that President Biden is putting environmental justice at the heart of his climate agenda. It might be good if I could ask you to just take a moment and tell people why that is such an important part of this issue. Well, I think it's important part of this issue for many reasons. The most basic is just moral.

You know, what is morally right and and how do you redress a wrong that is for too many years held people back, killed people by virtue of disease or other things, and resulted in a basic inequality and unfairness in society. And I think you share a feeling, as I do all that, that the fabric of a nation is built around certain organizational principles. And if you're holding yourselves out as a nation to be one thing, i.e. equal opportunity and fairness and and all people created equal and equal rights and so forth, if that's what you hold out there and it isn't there, eventually you get such a cynicism and such a backlash built up into your society that it doesn't hold together to some degree.

That is what we're seeing around the world today is is this nationalistic populism that is driven by this heightened inequality that has come through globalization that has mostly enriched already fairly well-off folks. And so if it's the upper one percent that's getting all the benefits and the rest of the world struggling to survive and they also have covid. And then you tell them we've got to do this or that in terms of climate, you're you're you're walking on very thin ice in terms of that that sacred relationship between government and the people who are governed.

It's not just an American phenomenon. You see it in Europe. You see it in alternative movements in various countries. And I think it is the great task of our generation not only to deal with climate, but to restore a sense of fairness to our economies, to our societies, to our world. And that is part of this battle, I think. Yeah, I agree. And another common source of opposition to what governments are doing now has to do with the fear, both in the US and elsewhere on the part of some that jobs might be lost in this transition toward a green economy.

You and I both know that there are a lot of jobs that can be created. But let me put the question to you. How can we approach this green transition in a way that lifts everybody, everyone up?

That is one of the most important things that we need to do now. And we can't lie to people. We can't say that some of the dislocation doesn't mean that a job that exists today might not be the same job in the future and that that person has to go through a process of getting there. And we need to make certain that they're not nobody's abandoned. We need to make certain that there are real mechanisms in place to help folks be able to transition.

And I just spoke the other day with Richard Trumka, the head of the American Federation of Labor, and he's been very focused on this. And we agreed to try to work through how do we integrate that into this transitional process so that we're guaranteeing that you don't abandon people. Now, one of the things we need to do is go to the places where there have been changes and there will be change. Southeastern Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia. You know, if the marketplace is making the decision and it's by the way, it's not government policy, it is the marketplace that has decided in America at least not to be building a new coal fired plant.

So where does that mean or where does that person who worked in that supply chain go? We have to make sure that the new companies, that the new jobs are actually going into those communities that the coal community country, that coal country, as we call it, in America, is actually being immediately and directly and realistically addressed in this to make sure that people are not abandoned and left behind. That is possible. That is doable. Historically, unfortunately, there've been too many words and not enough actual not enough, actually implementation and and process.

I think that can change. And I'm going to do everything possible in my my ability to to make sure that we do change it. Well, that's great. And another part of the context within which you are taking on this enormous challenge is the covid pandemic, which has exposed the cost of ignoring pre-existing systemic risks, inequalities and sustainability. And now as we start to come out of this pandemic, how can we avoid sleepwalking back into old habits? Well, I that's that's probably the toughest of all.

I mean, there's a natural proclivity for people sometimes to just choose the easiest way. And clearly, some people already have and will resort to that. I think the key will be in President Biden's proposal for the build back, which will actually fight hard to direct funds to the investments and to the sectors where we want to see a responsible bill back. There's another aspect, and I think that can be done. And I really feel that, for instance, someone is making a card today in South Carolina where BMW has plants.

And just to pick one place or Detroit, GM is obviously going to make this shift. They just announced it. The people building the car today are still going to have to put wheels on a car, build the car, put the seats in, do everything else. It's just that instead of an internal combustion engine, they can be quickly trained to be able to put the platform in for the batteries and the engines themselves, et cetera, that will drive the car, the motors that that that's one way of dealing.

Others are that there's there's new work. In some ways we have to lay transmission lines in America. We do not have a grid in the United States. As you know, we have an east coast, west coast. Texas has its own grid north, the part of America. But there's a huge hole in the country. You can't send energy efficiently from one place to another. We could lower prices for people and create more jobs in the build out of all of that kind of new infrastructure, not to mention the things that you and I, you know, they're going to be things that we can't name today, some negative and.

Emissions technology that's going to grab CO2 out of the atmosphere and and do something with it, like in Iceland where they put it into the rock, put a mix it with liquid and it turns into stone, I mean, there are all kinds of different things people are exploring. Those are new jobs.

I just want to say, since we've come to the end of our our time for this conversation. Thank you again for taking on this crucial challenge on behalf of the United States of America and enabling the US to restore its traditional role in trying to bring the world together. And I know that everybody listening to this conversation sends you their best wishes and hopes for all the success possible in this new work. John, thank you so much for joining Ted Countdown, and we wish you the very best.

Can I reciprocate for a minute? First of all, I want to thank you for your extraordinary leadership. For years. I can remember when you were leading us in the Senate on this and you've done so much since. And I am personally delighted to be working with you on this again and look forward to the next months and together with a lot of other folks. Let's get this done. PR ex.