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John Podesta already has quite a bit on his plate. The veteran political strategist has been working for the previous 12 months as a senior adviser to President Joe Biden overseeing the rollout of the Inflation Discount Act, the most important local weather legislation in United States historical past. Now, within the wake of one other landmark local weather settlement at COP28, he’s additionally going to take over the job of representing the U.S. on the world stage.
This week, following the information that particular local weather envoy John Kerry would depart the function this spring, President Joe Biden introduced that Podesta would take over the place, placing the latter in command of the administration’s local weather coverage overseas in addition to at residence.
Podesta arrives on this new function at a time when the USA is going through more and more pressing calls to step up the quantity of local weather funding it sends to growing international locations. As he represents the U.S. in worldwide local weather talks, he has a duty to comply with up Biden’s home coverage achievements with equal ambition on worldwide points, mentioned Rachel Cleetus, a coverage director on the Union of Involved Scientists.
“Regardless of vital progress secured by means of the Inflation Discount Act and different home insurance policies, the nation has repeatedly fallen brief, particularly on delivering local weather finance for low- and middle-income international locations to deal with local weather change,” she mentioned. She added that Podesta “might want to guarantee worldwide local weather diplomacy is as a lot a precedence because the home local weather agenda.”
Podesta has many years of expertise in Beltway politics and has influenced the form of local weather coverage beneath three Democratic presidents. As White Home chief of employees to Invoice Clinton, he helped Clinton hone his messaging on local weather and environmental points, and he later served as a high adviser to Barack Obama, who tried and didn’t promote Congress on a cap-and-trade local weather invoice. When that invoice died within the Senate, Podesta pushed Obama’s focus towards the manager department, crafting a key regulation of energy emissions.
After Congress handed the Inflation Discount Act in 2022, Biden requested Podesta to return to the White Home to assist implement the landmark laws. As Podesta informed Grist final summer season, this job entailed not solely promoting the legislation to corporations and native governments but in addition getting within the weeds on advanced coverage questions referring to inexperienced hydrogen and carbon removing.
Nevertheless, Podesta has much less expertise in overseas coverage than his predecessor. The outgoing local weather envoy served on the Senate overseas relations committee and as Obama’s secretary of state, and he has represented the USA at a number of United Nations local weather conferences. Kerry was instrumental in negotiating the landmark Paris Settlement in 2015 and in hammering out final 12 months’s so-called “UAE consensus” at COP28 in Dubai. The latter accord represented the primary time that the world’s nations agreed to transition away from soiled fuels.
Kerry’s shut relationship together with his Chinese language counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, additionally allowed the USA and China to make progress on local weather cooperation even amid a broader geopolitical chill. Final 12 months, as an example, the 2 nations signed a joint settlement to speed up renewable vitality deployment. When Kerry gave his discover simply months after Xie introduced his retirement, The Guardian hailed the second because the “finish of an period in world local weather politics.”
Podesta engaged at size with China and India on local weather points when he served within the Obama administration, and he too consulted on the Paris accord. Some observers mentioned Podesta would probably proceed on the trail Kerry set within the local weather envoy function.
“John Podesta is definitely a gentle pair of arms,” mentioned Li Shuo, director of the China local weather program on the Asia Society Coverage Institute, a assume tank. “He has handled the China file very extensively collectively within the Obama administration with John Kerry, and I’m anticipating a continuation of the place John Kerry left.”
However different local weather advocates expressed concern about Podesta’s previous give attention to home affairs, and his plan to advise Biden on home and worldwide issues concurrently.
“This stance means that worldwide negotiations will change into a secondary precedence, regardless of the pressing world necessity to drastically escalate local weather motion,” mentioned Harjeet Singh, head of worldwide political technique on the environmental group Local weather Motion Community, in a press release. He mentioned the appointment “casts a shadow of doubt over the USA’ dedication to world local weather management.”
The White Home didn’t reply to Grist’s request for an interview with Podesta earlier than publication.
Biden’s 2021 appointment of Kerry as the primary ever “particular envoy on local weather change” drew the ire of many Senate Republicans, who accused Biden of bypassing the conventional affirmation course of for ambassadors and different senior diplomatic officers. Biden has appointed at the very least 40 particular envoys, in line with Ballotpedia, excess of any earlier president. These diplomats deal with points from Yemen to the Arctic to Iran’s nuclear program.
Congress handed a funding invoice in 2021 that closed the loophole permitting for particular envoy positions, which means that future local weather diplomats will probably be topic to affirmation by the Senate, identical to their bizarre ambassador counterparts. The very thought of a local weather envoy is anathema to many Republicans in Congress, which means any successor Biden appoints will face a tricky highway to affirmation. If Donald Trump wins one other time period in November, the place will nearly definitely vanish altogether.
In an obvious try to keep away from this new Senate affirmation requirement, Biden has introduced that Podesta will function “senior adviser” for “worldwide local weather coverage.” Shelly Moore Capito, a Republican senator who’s influential on local weather points, mentioned the transfer was an try to “circumvent Congress on environmental coverage.”
The most important merchandise on Podesta’s agenda would be the “new collective quantified aim,” a fundraising goal that the world’s international locations are hoping to hammer out at COP29 in Azerbaijan in November. Wealthy international locations set a aim in 2009 to ship poor international locations $100 billion per 12 months for decarbonization and catastrophe response, however they’ve lagged far not on time on assembly it. As the subsequent local weather convention approaches, growing international locations are demanding that the USA make a lot stronger monetary commitments.
Along with determining how the U.S. ought to have interaction with these calls for, Podesta may even should wrangle international locations like China and Saudi Arabia, which weren’t obligated to donate to the funding pool established within the 2009 settlement. These international locations are in a limbo zone between developed and growing, and far of the controversy across the “new collective quantified aim” has centered on how a lot they need to be anticipated to contribute.
Some local weather activists mentioned the altering of the guard would give the Biden administration an opportunity to reposition itself in world local weather talks. Many of those activists have criticized Kerry for rebuffing monetary calls for from growing international locations — simply final summer season he informed Congress that he would “on no account” commit the USA to a coverage of “local weather reparations.” When wealthy international locations launched a loss and harm fund at COP28 to assist poor international locations tackle the implications of local weather change, the USA volunteered to contribute simply $17.5 million, a fraction of what smaller international locations like Italy and Japan pledged.
Kerry and different U.S. diplomats have usually centered on extracting commitments from different international locations at local weather talks relatively than making commitments themselves, mentioned Brandon Wu, coverage director at ActionAid, an financial justice advocacy group.
“Quite than participating within the conventional U.S. negotiating techniques that Kerry favored — telling different international locations what to do whereas pretending the U.S. is a pacesetter regardless of its report of failure — he must shift the tone and substance of U.S. local weather diplomacy altogether,” Wu mentioned of Podesta. “It’s no straightforward job, however that’s the pure consequence of so a few years of inaction from the world’s largest historic local weather polluter.”
The job is made even tougher by the truth that the particular local weather envoy doesn’t management federal spending. Even when Podesta does pledge extra worldwide funding, it is going to be as much as Congress to move a legislation that makes that pledge a actuality. With Congress cut up between Republicans and Democrats, and the result of the subsequent presidential election nonetheless anybody’s guess, it is going to be exhausting for the diplomats reverse Podesta to take him at his phrase.
Zoya Teirstein contributed reporting to this story.
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