‘They are working harder than most people I know’

Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry defended elites who emit enormous amounts of carbon tonnage by flying on private jets, even as he demands that lower classes sacrifice for the climate.

In an interview published Friday, Yahoo News Senior Climate Editor Ben Adler asked Kerry about reports that he switched from flying private to flying commercial.

Kerry’s penchant for flying private has been a long-running joke among his critics, who note that private jet-setting is one of the largest contributors to “climate change” and can emit two tons of CO2 in one hour. Estimates show that in the year-and-a-half since Biden occupied the White House, the Kerry family’s private jet emitted 300 metric tons of carbon.

In 2019 the climate commissar defended himself after flying his private jet to Iceland to accept an environmental award, telling a reporter that “[i]f you offset your carbon, it’s the only choice for somebody like me, who is traveling the world to win this battle.”

Offsetting carbon means taking environmentally friendly action to make up for environmentally harmful action. In some countries, one can even buy carbon offsets by paying the government a fee for each carbon ton emitted.

Despite this justification, Kerry told Adler in a recent interview that he never flew private while serving as Biden’s climate commissar.

“No, I never flew private while I was in this job,” said Kerry. “It’s just a misnomer. I’ve had one, maybe two private flights which are US military flights in order to get to China during COVID right where we were forced into that, but I fly commercially.”

Adler pointed out that many attendees at the World Economic Forum’s annual summit in Davos, Switzerland, where climate change is considered the greatest threat to mankind, arrive on private jets.

“I’ve talked to them about it,” answered Kerry. “They offset. They buy offsets, they offset, and they are working harder than most people I know to be able to affect this transition. Aviation as a whole, all of the aviation in the world, is about three percent of our emissions in the world.”

Some commentators note that purchasing offsets allows elites to emit more carbon and thus remain unaffected by any climate change restrictions or regulations.

But while Kerry is defending those elites who fly on private jets, he is demanding sacrifice from the world’s destitute.

In October, Kerry asked the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the poorest countries in the world, to cut back on auctioning some of its oil blocks to protect the forests. 

“We know it’s urgent. I spoke yesterday with the Deputy Prime Minister and I will speak this afternoon with the President, but it is his decision,” Kerry told journalists at the pre-COP27 conference in Kinshasa, DR Congo. 

“We have clearly described our interest in protecting the forests. We have asked for some blocks to be removed from the auction,” he said. 

But DR Congo’s Environment Minister Eve Bazaiba pushed back at Kerry and other wealthier countries at the conference, saying that “the G20 is responsible for 80% of the pollution in the world… . [T]he real debate of this pre-COP and COP27 is the responsibility of the polluting countries.” 

“What should we do in this circumstance,” she asked, “let our children and small children die of hunger? As much as we need oxygen, we also need bread.” 

Kerry is known for his “scorched earth” approach to the environment, which takes precedence over human needs. In March, Kerry said “climate change” was worse than the Russia-Ukraine war and expressed concern that the war was stealing attention from the “war on climate change”.