John Kerry to leave Biden administration, plans to join prez’s re-election campaign
John Kerry, President Biden’s high-flying climate czar, will leave his post later this winter to focus on his boss’s re-election campaign.
The 80-year-old former secretary of state and onetime Democratic presidential candidate – who has drawn criticism for his luxe jet-setting while preaching energy austerity for the masses – told his staff of his imminent departure after speaking with Biden Wednesday, Axios reported Saturday.
The administration has not chosen a replacement for Kerry, who has been Biden’s top climate diplomat since 2021, source familiar with the situation told Reuters.
Kerry has not taken an official job in Biden’s re-election, but “plans to help tell the climate story in the context of Biden’s campaign,” according to Axios.
The Democrat’s long political career, including a 28-year stint as a US senator from Massachusetts and a failed White House run against George W. Bush in 2004, was marred by persistent accusations of climate hypocrisy.
When Biden named Kerry to his custom-created, US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate in 2021, critics bashed him for his regular use of a private jet, a Gulfstream Aerospace aircraft registered to a company owned by his wife Teresa Heinz-Kerry.
During his 2004 presidential run, Kerry’s campaign made 60 payments to his wife’s company, totaling $273,171, for use of the aircraft – and in 2013, the then-secretary of state’s executive branch personnel financial disclosure showed him owning “over $1,000,001” in the company’s assets through his wife, Fox News reported.
Kerry continued to use the carbon-spewing jet during his first 18 months as climate czar, racking up 48 trips lasting more than 60 hours and releasing an estimated 715,886 pounds — 325 metric tons — of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to flight records.
Luxe corporate jets can emit up to 40 times as much carbon per passenger as commercial aircraft, experts say.
His jet-setting trips to rub shoulders at star-studded climate confabs in Egypt, Dubai, Scotland, Japan, and the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland drew relentless mockery from Republicans.
“The gas is always greener when you’re burning fossil fuels in the name of saving the planet,” Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst told The Post in June, when she introduced a bill that would keep tabs on greenhouse gas emissions by Kerry and other Biden administration officials.
“According to these Biden bureaucrats’ own actions emitting greenhouse gases while jetting across the world, American-made fossil fuels are not the enemy,” Ernst said. “The double standard is clear, and Americans have had enough of this hot air.”
Kerry’s close relationship with China – particularly his diplomatic counterpart, Xie Zhenhua – has also drawn fire, with critics repeatedly accusing him of downplaying Beijing’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang to win climate concessions.
As President Obama’s secretary of state, Kerry was instrumental in negotiating the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement – the controversial climate deal that Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, abandoned in 2017.
In 2021, he refused to answer a reporter who asked whether Kerry had pressed Chinese leaders on the alleged use of forced labor to build solar panels in Xinjiang.
“We’re honest about the differences … but that’s not my lane here,” Kerry said.
“That’s — my job is to be the climate guy, and stay focused on trying to move the climate agenda forward.”
In December, Kerry helped broker the UAE Consensus, an international agreement meant to transition the world away from fossil fuels while funneling huge amounts of cash to poor nations for climate change “loss and damage.”
“There shouldn’t be any more coal-fired power plants permitted anywhere in the world,” Kerry said last year at the COP28 UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai, claiming that they “are killing people on a daily basis.”
The Post has reached out to the White House and Kerry’s office.
