John Kerry, the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, is working with White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients on moving to Biden’s re-election campaign.

The story broke on Saturday. It’s the kind of announcement that Team Biden would want to just slip into the news cycle with as little fanfare as possible. Kerry’s position in the Biden White House is a made-up one. He’s the first to hold his title and the position is not one that was confirmed by the Senate. He has a seat on the National Security Council in the White House. It’s reported that Kerry spoke to Biden on Wednesday and told his staff Saturday. He has served in the job for three years.

The job was seen as a sop to Kerry, now 80, an old Senate pal of Biden’s. Kerry fancies himself as a climate expert and the narrative now is that Kerry thinks Biden’s re-election is the “single biggest” difference that can be made this year for climate activism, both domestically and globally. Kerry plans to be out of the White House before spring.

John Kerry was the Democrat nominee for president in 2004. He lost to George W. Bush. He ran a bad presidential campaign. His time in Biden’s White House has been mostly a farce. Kerry’s bloated ego is always front and center. As Axios reported, Kerry thinks great things have happened during the Biden administration on the topic of climate. Kerry is touting his time at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai. He spoke with Biden about that during their conversation Wednesday.

In the conversation, Kerry emphasized his gratitude for the assignment, his belief that Biden has amassed a trailblazing climate record at home and globally, and his excitement about the difference renewed U.S. leadership has made globally over the past three years, the source said.

Kerry faced a formidable challenge since his appointment was announced in November 2020, alongside Biden’s core national security team.

He needed to reestablish U.S. credibility on climate change after the Trump administration backed out of the Paris Agreement.
Kerry brought a rare stature and deep experience to the job: He’s able to meet with world leaders as well as fellow climate envoys, and has been involved in this issue since his time as a senator.

Kerry’s successor will encounter a world that’s increasingly skeptical about U.S. climate commitments in the run-up to the election.

The Axios piece is very complimentary of Kerry because the media is happy to carry water for him. Kerry saved the planet, you know, by getting the United States back into the Paris Agreement, which Trump canceled. Kerry, like Al Gore, turned himself into a climate change grifter. Signing the COP28 agreement was his big success. He concentrated on cozying up to China in order to get its signature on the agreement.

Among Kerry’s top priorities as Biden’s special envoy had been to maintain close diplomatic ties with China on climate change, even as numerous other political and trade tensions simmered.

Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua were instrumental in getting nearly 200 countries to agree to the Paris agreement and UAE Consensus through bilateral agreements they reached. The two worked through some of the thornier issues such as whether developing countries should be responsible for reducing emissions and how countries should commit to moving away from fossil fuel use.

China on Friday announced it had named Liu Zhenmin, a former vice foreign minister, as its new special envoy for climate change after Xie, 74, stepped down due to health reasons.

Just like the Paris Accord, the COP28 agreement is a non-binding one. Do you think China is going to stop building coal plants at a record clip in order to appease John Kerry and the climate extremists? Of course not.

Why is Kerry leaving now and moving to the campaign? My guess is that he is trying to avoid more of the scrutiny he has been receiving lately from those who are concerned about Kerry’s lack of transparency and disclosures in his office. House committees are investigating Kerry’s office. Specifically, they are looking into Kerry’s push to eliminate the coal-producing energy sector.

“Documents produced to the Committee reveal that the State Department sought and received feedback from leftist environmental groups on the [PPCA] and enabled those groups to influence U.S. foreign policy,” Comer wrote to Blinken. “These documents raise significant concerns that confidential information related to U.S. foreign policy, energy policy, and national security policy, have been shared with these groups, including in off-the-record meetings with Envoy John Kerry.”

“The PPCA announcement was the latest example of Envoy Kerry and the Biden Administration taking actions under the guise of climate advocacy that undermine our economic health and threaten foreign policy priorities while avoiding congressional scrutiny,” the Oversight chairman continued.

Kerry’s office costs American taxpayers $4.3M a year. There has been a lack of transparency on Kerry’s expenditures or his staff. He flies on private jets and pretends to be a warrior against climate change, just as long as it doesn’t affect his lifestyle.

Michael Chamberlain, Director of Protect the Public’s Trust, a government watchdog group, released a statement about Kerry’s upcoming departure from his office in a press release.

“John Kerry’s decision to step down from his role as the Biden Administration’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate presents an opportunity to improve both transparency and Constitutional governance. Despite heading an extremely powerful office in the State Department and lacking Senate confirmation, Mr. Kerry’s chain of command bypassed the Secretary of State and went directly to the President. His office was also infamous for attempts to avoid the transparency the American public expects. PPT was one of the few entities able to pry records out of Mr. Kerry’s office but what little did trickle out revealed staff attempting to avoid federal records requirements (discussing scheduling a call or meeting “focusing on all the elements we can’t put on paper,” for instance) and outsourcing foreign policy to influential special interest groups. We wish Mr. Kerry all the best but nevertheless are hopeful that his absence will signal a turn toward an office that will respect the norms, traditions, and obligations that will help restore the public’s evaporating trust in its government.”

Good riddance. He’ll move on to a new grift but at least he will be out of the White House. Hold the office accountable for expenditures and on who is hired as staff, if the department is to continue.