Window Seat on the World Page 29

  At the same time, Indonesia is considered one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, because it’s another archipelago prone to droughts and heavy rainfall. Kerry noted some scientists were predicting a one-meter rise in the sea level by the end of the twenty-first century. That would put half of Jakarta—a city of nearly 10 million people—underwater.

  While the United States and China were willing to do their part heading into the 2015 COP meeting, it also was incumbent on nations such as Indonesia to do their share, Secretary Kerry said during his speech.

  “There is still time for us to significantly cut greenhouse emissions and prevent the very worst consequences of climate change from ever happening at all,” he said. “But we need to move on this, and we need to move together now.”429

  Kerry took special aim at climate-change deniers, those who doubt humans are contributing to climate change despite 97 percent of peer-reviewed climate studies showing the phenomenon is occurring, and human activity is responsible for it.

  “President Obama and I believe very deeply that we do not have time for a meeting anywhere of the Flat Earth Society,” the secretary said.430

  He put climate change in the same category as terrorism or nuclear proliferation, two problems that can’t be solved individually but only collectively. He said:

  In a sense, climate change can now be considered another weapon of mass destruction, perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction. . . . The fact is that climate change, if left unchecked, will wipe out many more communities from the face of the Earth. And that is unacceptable under any circumstances—but is even more unacceptable because we know what we can do and need to do in order to deal with this challenge.431

  That comment was criticized by those who said there was no equivalency between the threat posed by climate change and the wave of Islamic terrorism then sweeping the world.

  Kerry reiterated his belief in July 2016 as he lobbied to amend the 1987 Montreal Protocol and phase out hydrofluorocarbons from appliances like air conditioners and refrigerators.

  “Yesterday, I met in Washington with 45 nations—defense ministers and foreign ministers—as we were working together on the challenge of Daesh, ISIL, and terrorism,” the secretary said on July 22, 2016, in Vienna. “It’s hard for some people to grasp it, but what we—you—are doing here right now is of equal importance, because it has the ability to literally save life on the planet itself.”432

  That prompted derisive headlines in conservative media of the sort seen on the Fox News website: “Kerry: Air conditioners as big a threat as ISIS.”433

  Kerry closed out 2014 much like he had 2013, warning about the consequences of ignoring climate change. This time his venue wasn’t the Philippines but Peru, and the occasion was the twentieth UN-sponsored Conference of Parties—the last before COP 21 in Paris.

  A key focus of his remarks was rebutting those who argued it was too costly to address such a massive problem. The secretary turned that analysis on its head. He noted extreme weather events in the United States cost $110 billion just in 2012, while coping with Typhoon Haiyan cost $10 billion.434

  “You start adding up these 100 billions and 10 billions here in country after country, and think if that money had been put to helping to subsidize the transition to a better fuel, to an alternative or renewable, to cleaner, to emissions-free, to clean emissions capacity,” the secretary said.435

  Collectively, these trips around Middle Earth encapsulated Kerry’s concerns about climate change.

  To address it, big emitters like China, the United States, and India needed to set ambitious targets. And developing countries like Indonesia couldn’t just take a pass, because their populations were at risk from bad air, rising seas, and other climate change effects.

  Each type of country, meanwhile, stood to gain from investing in renewable energy. They could tap a market that could fuel their economy or gain technology allowing them to expand their electrical grid.

  Arguing that digging up or pumping fossil fuels was less expensive than installing high-tech alternatives like solar panels was really a false argument, he said, when you added up the public health costs from breathing dirty air. That figure was compounded with the death toll and damages caused by superstorms lashing the planet.

  Finally, promoting a clean environment would help prevent conflict from water shortages or forced migration triggered by drought, while also preserving fishing stocks needed to feed an expanding global population.

  It was this final point that also inspired another of Secretary Kerry’s major environmental initiatives.

  _________

  THE BOSS WAS NEVER short of inspiration. Nor was he ever one not to think big.

  That meant some on his staff were a bit dismissive when, during just our second day on the job, he announced he wanted to do something to call attention to the plight of the world’s oceans.

  John Kerry already had a few stock phrases he used in Senate speeches about the topic, complaining about massive trawlers “strip-mining” the ocean as “too much money chased too few fish.” We would come to hear him say the popular film series Planet Earth should really be called Planet Ocean, because there was more water than land around the globe.

  Now, the secretary wanted to go beyond the rhetoric. He felt oceans were under siege from overfishing and acidification caused by, among other things, fertilizer runoff. Fish were not only being swallowed up by factory ships sweeping through huge swaths of water but being choked by man-made plastic ending up in the sea.

  Oceans covered more than two-thirds of the earth, yet few were sounding the alarm over their protection despite evidence of climate change on land.

  Kerry envisioned compiling empirical data from sources around the world to create an unimpeachable repository of scientific evidence that spelled out the threat. He also proposed working with National Geographic and some of the world’s great filmmakers, like James Cameron, to produce a movie about the challenge. And the secretary was so sure of what he wanted to say, he said he was willing to write and direct it himself.

  Since he had just assumed a busy day job, we convinced him to settle for something else—but it ended up being only slightly less ambitious.

  Secretary Kerry gave birth to the State Department’s first Our Ocean conference. It brought together foreign ministers, environmentalists, and ocean experts from around the world for two days of meetings aimed at producing tangible results toward addressing such problems.

  And not only did Kerry host the inaugural gathering in June 2014, but he traveled to Valparaiso, Chile, a year later for the second meeting. He then reprised the event in Washington in 2016 for one final push before leaving office.

  All told, those three conferences generated over $9.2 billion to protect the ocean and commitments from countries around the world to safeguard 3.8 million square miles of water.

  That area is roughly the size of the United States.

  In a tribute to vision, though, the conference has lived on even after he finished his term.

  The 2017 meeting was held on the Mediterranean island-state of Malta. The 2018 in Indonesia. And Norway asked to host the 2019 meeting.

  Undersecretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Cathy Novelli was tasked with organizing the first and third conferences. She used her contacts in the environmental community and from her prior job at Apple to transform a State Department auditorium into a virtual aquarium.

  Fish and waves moved across video screens lining three of the room’s four sides, while one of the courtyards in the middle of the Harry S Truman Building became a showcase for new technology, a breakout space for lectures, and a gathering spot for conference attendees.

  Novelli deliberately chose the name Our Ocean—rather than Oceans—to communicate that scientists consider the seven seas a single waterway interconnected around the planet.

  Kerry was thunderstruck when he walked into the meeting hall on J
une 16, 2014, and saw his vision achieved before an audience from more than eighty countries. Among the visitors was Prince Albert II of Monaco, an environmentalist who paid special attention to ocean acidification.

  “When anybody looks out at the ocean—we’re all sort of guilty of it one time or another—when you stand on a beach and you look out at the tide rolling in, you feel somehow that the ocean is larger than life, that it’s an endless resource impossible to destroy,” the secretary said in his opening remarks. “Most people underestimate the enormous damage that we as human beings are inflicting on our ocean every single day.”436

  The attendees set off to learn about how to prevent such damage at panels focused on marine protected areas, sustainable fisheries, marine pollution, and climate-related impacts on the ocean.

  President Obama greeted them via video the second day before keynote speaker Leonardo DiCaprio took the stage for remarks. The actor/environmentalist announced a $7 million pledge from his foundation to support ocean preservation during the ensuing two years.

  “These last remaining underwater bio-gems are being destroyed because there isn’t proper enforcement or sufficient cooperation among governments to protect them,” DiCaprio said. “If we don’t do something to save our oceans now, it won’t be just the sharks and the dolphins that will suffer; it will be all of us including our children and our grandchildren.”437

  Attendees ended up pledging $1.8 billion—$800 million focused on the ocean, $1 billion focused more generally on climate change.438 President Obama also designated the largest marine protected area in the world, expanding the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument by almost six times.439

  The second conference, in Chile, was held October 5–6, 2015. Secretary Kerry was especially happy the branding had carried over, giving continuity to the conferences. It was temporarily renamed “Nuestro Oceanos” to reflect the language of our Spanish-speaking hosts.

  Chilean president Michelle Bachelet attended and spoke at the conference, as did businessman and environmentalist Richard Branson.

  In his remarks, Kerry recalled the fundamental problems confronting the audience:

  We’re not just fishing unsustainably, my friends; we are living unsustainably. Our ocean is taking in a massive amount of pollution—8 million tons of plastic alone every single day. To put that into context, scientists say that the ocean may soon contain one ton of plastic for every three tons of fish. Not only that, but the chemistry of our ocean is changing rapidly. Why? Because nearly a third of greenhouse gases that are coming out of tailpipes of cars and smokestacks of power plants end up getting absorbed by the ocean.

  Among other solutions, he called for establishing Sea Scout, a network aimed at integrating all existing and emerging technologies—and linking responsible entities and agencies around the world—to cut down on illegal fishing or pollution via a unified network.

  “Today, various nations are working hard to track and address illegal fishing, but the fact is no nation is currently capable of policing the entire range of the oceans,” Secretary Kerry said. “On the other hand, we have an obligation to make certain that no square kilometer of ocean is beyond the law.”440

  The final conference of Secretary Kerry’s term was held September 15–16, 2016, in Washington. Participants announced over 136 new initiatives on marine conservation and protection that were valued at more than $5.24 billion—far more than the $1.8 billion from the first year. They also made new pledges to protect over 1.5 million square miles of the ocean.

  President Obama gave special endorsement to the meeting, addressing the attendees in person this time.

  In his remarks, Kerry sought to maintain the momentum established since his first brainstorming about the conference.

  “With every positive step that we take, with the marine protected areas that we create, with the networks that we create and the safeguards that we enforce to protect against illegal fishing, with the cooperation we pursue to combat climate change and to deepen scientific research—with each of these steps, we drop a pebble on the side of restoring and preserving the health of the ocean,” he said.441

  Through 2018, the conferences had generated commitments of $28 billion in pledges and vows to protect 10.2 million square miles of ocean—a sweeping legacy emanating from a simple idea expressed on the secretary’s second day at work.442

  Perhaps my favorite two-day stretch at the State Department was June 6–7, 2014.

  My wife came to Paris to join us for a visit to Normandy, France, which President Obama and Secretary Kerry were visiting to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the D-Day invasion. The family junket was especially fitting because my wife, Cathy, was born on June 6.

  We watched the president address survivors of the Allied invasion and pay tribute to those who died just below us on Omaha Beach. Some are buried under bleached-white crosses in the American Cemetery.

  Then he and Secretary Kerry headed off for another commemorative event, so we piled into vans for a drive up the Brittany coast. Our destination was Saint-Briac-sur-Mer, the seaside town where Rosemary Forbes Kerry had the family home that had been occupied by the Nazis during World War II.

  Secretary Kerry wanted to go back in his official position to pay tribute to three Americans who had died liberating the area. He also had a very personal reason. He wanted to thank the townspeople who went to his family homestead and recovered heirlooms after the fleeing Germans turned their guns on the house and nearly leveled it.

  Memorial wreaths for three Americans.

  John Kerry says one of his earliest childhood memories is walking up the pockmarked driveway of Les Essarts and hearing his mother weep at the sight.

  We spent the night of June 6 in nearby Dinard before setting off early the next morning for a wreath-laying ceremony at a memorial pillar outside Saint-Briac. It was erected in honor of the three fallen GIs.

  In a Forrest Gump twist typical of Secretary Kerry, his father, Richard, apprenticed for the sculptor who built the memorial. The summer he was there, he met Rosemary Forbes while she visited her family home.

  Joining the secretary for the ceremony was his cousin, Brice Lalonde, who’d been mayor of Saint-Briac, as well as a renowned World War II combat photographer, Tony Vaccaro. He snapped an iconic photo on August 14, 1944, of an American soldier kissing a little girl while women danced around them to celebrate Saint-Briac’s freedom.

  After the wreath laying, the secretary was scheduled to drive to the town square where Vaccaro took the picture, so he could deliver his thank-you speech. Instead, he opted to walk, prompting the several hundred who’d come out to the memorial to join in an impromptu march back to town.

  Joined by his cousin, the then-mayor of Saint-Briac, and other officials, Secretary Kerry played Pied Piper while leading the group along the seaside streets and into the town square, which itself was already jammed.

  He then stood on a balcony at town hall to deliver his thanks. Joining him was Vaccaro and a ninety-two-year-old woman who’d been one of the dancers in the backdrop of the photo now known as The Kiss of Liberation.

  It was an emotional moment for everyone involved.

  Afterward, we staffers were set to drive back to Paris while the secretary spent the night at his family home.

  But before we left, he invited us to join him for drinks on the patio. As the sun set on the Brittany coast, Secretary Kerry led us around the grounds where several generations of the Forbes family had summered.

  Among the stops was a bunker still remaining from World War II.

  It was a landmark in which Secretary Kerry played as a child.

  (Top) Secretary Kerry and Saint-Briac Mayor Vincent Denby-Wilkes lead a procession back into town after laying a wreath at a World War II memorial on June 7, 2014. (Bottom) Speech to Saint-Briac residents.

  (Top) Tony Vaccaro and his photo. (Bottom) Woman hands Secretary Kerry scrapbooks of him she kept.

  _________

&nbs
p; SECRETARY KERRY HAD AN unexpected ally in sounding the alarm about climate change. And ally is an appropriate term.

  Just as few may have expected a diplomat to focus on a topic usually reserved for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or the US Environmental Protection Agency, some were surprised to learn the US Department of Defense shared the State Department’s concern about climate change.

  The military is charged with addressing all credible threats to the nation’s security, and it has concluded that climate change can cause direct threats in the form of rising sea levels, or indirect threats such as political instability triggered by water shortages.

  They are considered a “threat multiplier” to more commonly perceived challenges, such as an opposing army or rogue nuclear actor.

  The Pentagon outlined these concerns during the Obama administration in its 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, as well as a 2015 report titled “National Security Implications of Climate-Related Risks and a Changing Climate.”

  The latter report quoted the former in saying, “Climate change is an urgent and growing threat to our national security, contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources such as food and water. These impacts are already occurring, and the scope, scale, and intensity of these impacts are projected to increase over time.”443

  The Center for Climate & Security, a nonpartisan policy institute advised by an array of retired military leaders, detailed the concern on its website:

  Climate change effects such as sea-level rise have the ability to compromise coastal military installations that are critical for such operations. . . . Extreme drought or flooding in areas where militaries are engaged in warfighting, for example, can compromise water supply lines, and thus threaten military personnel directly. . . . In the Arctic, a melting ice cap, coupled with increasing tensions between Russia and other Arctic nations, could increase the likelihood of conflict. . . . Migrating fish stocks in the South China Sea may create pressures on the fishing industry to move into contested water, leading to increased tensions between China, its neighbors, and the United States.444