Kerry Loves London and Paris More Than Climate

A hh, John Kerry and Paris. Cole Porter long ago wrote the lyrics to Kerry’s travels:

I love Paris every moment,
Every moment of the year.

Kerry was famous when secretary of state for the time he spent there, and his travel schedule as United States special presidential envoy for climate shows little change — except perhaps for the amount of time he spends in London.

Kerry’s official travel schedule in his climate position shows seven visits to Paris by my count, and twelve to London. No doubt there’s always an absolutely compelling reason, as there must be for his four Rome visits, his attendance at the Jordanian royal wedding and the British coronation, his Berlin visits, his Brussels visits, his Davos and Geneva visits, and all the other nice spots and excellent restaurants. And of course he could not have missed attending the “Monaco Blue Initiative” in Monte Carlo. Even when some of these meetings include a virtual element allowing participation by a Web link (see, for example, the three-day conference on “The Power of Green Energy: Our Future Is Now!” organized in November 2021 by the U.S. Embassy in Paris), how could he not be there in person? There are no French restaurants by Zoom.

There are no Kerry trips to East Africa, where water scarcity is a major problem. He visited the Bahamas, but not Central America. He visited the rich countries of the Gulf (Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia) seven times but Egypt only once.

Kerry met with the pope and attended the Munich Security Conference, and those two quite unnecessary trips raise a related question: Has anyone figured out how much pollution all that travel is causing? The New York Post published a calculation made by Fox News about Kerry’s private jet, owned by his family. Kerry uses that jet, for example, to get from his Boston mansion to his $12 million, 18-acre beachfront estate on Martha’s Vineyard, and to get to vacations in Sun Valley, Idaho. According to Fox, Kerry’s private jet flights emitted 325 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the beginning of the Biden administration to the summer of 2022.

When Kerry travels as special climate envoy, a job for which he’s made about 75 trips, he apparently travels by “milair” (military air flight) with great frequency. That means that the U.S. Air Force provides a plane and crew for Kerry and any staffer he takes with him. If his 48 flights around Massachusetts and the United States emitted 325 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 18 months in 2021–22, the mind boggles to think of the totals for 75 long-distance international flights. Surely it will be in the thousands of metric tons of emissions. Criticized for private jet travel, Kerry responded that using a private jet is “the only choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle.” The only word for that is hypocrisy. While we mere mortals must start moving away from gasoline engines for our cars, the superrich climate envoy can use his Gulfstream IV jet and his U.S. Air Force flights with abandon.

Perhaps by now, in 2023, Kerry has condescended to take the occasional commercial flight, where ordinary mortals in first-class seats seem to avoid torture. Kerry should be traveling whenever it’s necessary or even useful: The whole purpose of having a special envoy is to speak with foreign government officials and audiences about climate. But if the threat from climate change is serious, why is the envoy not serious about the gargantuan emissions his own lifestyle and his own frivolous travel create? We all love Paris, but places like Ethiopia have more serious climate issues than France. London and Paris have much better restaurants than Addis Ababa, but Kerry isn’t the Michelin reviewer. The locations and the amount of his travel should reflect more discipline, less self-indulgence — and fewer emissions. Here’s a hint for Congress: How about setting a limit for emissions from the climate envoy?