-Our first guest tonight served
as United States senator from Massachusetts,
and secretary of state for President Obama.
He is now the special presidential envoy for climate,
as part of the United States National Security Council.
Please welcome back to the show John Kerry.
[ Applause ] ♪♪
-Hi, Seth. -Thank you for being back.
-Good to see you, man. -Good to see you, too.
Thank you.
♪♪
-Welcome. It is lovely to have you here.
I know we have you here in town because of the UN.
Do you feel like you're making progress?
-Yeah, I do.
Can I begin just by saying thank you for doing this,
for joining with your fellow late night hosts?
It's fantastic and you do an incredible Bernie Sanders.
-Thank you. -It's great.
-That means the most to me and I only wish
my Bernie could stop the warming of our planet.
[ Laughter ]
-I think he's warming the planet, actually.
-Yeah, maybe just get him to quiet down a little.
I want to ask real quick because the UN had maybe --
and, again, you're a big star, special envoy --
but, on Monday... -I don't know.
-...BTS performed. -I know. I know. They're great.
-John Kerry's a BTS fan?
-I watched the video there.
You know, what is it,
"Permission to Dance" or something?
It's fantastic. -Yeah. They know what they're doing, right?
-Well, you know you see them. I travel a lot, nowadays,
and you see them in all these advertisements.
You know, when they're prepping the airplane,
they're doing one thing. -[ Laughing ] Yeah.
-It's kind of crazy. Want to get up and --
-[ Laughs ] -No.
-I would love you not to. -But they're fun.
A lot of people I know would love me not to.
No, but they're really good. They are good.
-And they're taking this seriously as well
and I think a lot of young people, right now,
are sort of getting wise to the fact that
this is going to be their planet for a lot longer
than it's going to be your and my planet.
Is there any reason for them to be optimistic right now?
-Yes. I mean, there is a reason to be optimistic.
There's also a reason to be hopeful.
Very hopeful.
You know, just yesterday,
President Biden upped the ante of what the United States
is going to do to support the transition
and to help convert to electric cars
and all the things we need to do.
And he's committed about $11 billion
that the United States is going to deploy,
in order to help the transition.
But, equally importantly,
he's got major legislation in the Congress.
Try to deploy 500,000
electric vehicle charging stations
to accelerate this transition.
A tax credit for production, for investment.
We have to invest. I mean, in order to get there,
Seth, we have to invest
trillions of dollars over the next 30 years.
No government has the kind of money
that's going to make this transition happen,
so what really encourages me is the private sector.
They are stepping up
and you have CEOs all around the world,
you have major financial institutions,
that are prepared to invest
literally trillions of dollars in the next 10 years,
which, the scientists tell us, is the critical period.
-It does seem like there are some moderates,
even on the Democratic side,
who are maybe trying to slow this down a little bit.
Has it been frustrating for you that it doesn't seem to be
that the entire party is taking this
as seriously as they should?
-No, I think they're taking it seriously.
What frustrates me are the people who think
that ivermectin is going to solve the problem.
-No, yeah, they're problematic.
-You know, I mean,
there's so much disinformation.
There's a whole party that's waiting for the MyPillow guy
to give them a clue as to what
they ought to do, right? -[ Laughing ] Yeah.
-That's a problem.
I mean, seriously.
We've lost years, here.
We lost three years with President Trump.
He pulled out of the Paris Agreement.
Thank God that governors,
Republicans and Democrats, alike,
continue to deploy their
renewable portfolio laws in the states.
So America isn't as far behind as some people think,
but the world is far behind.
All of us together really have,
you know, a shortened amount of time to get this job done.
And the kids are absolutely correct to be furious,
to be frustrated, to scold us and say,
"Adults, hey, be adults. Get the job done,"
and that's what we're trying to do.
-Obviously, Paris was reported on in 2015,
when you negotiated that climate agreement.
Now, we're coming up and you're preparing
for Glasgow in the fall. -Right.
-And I believe it's being sold as our last, best chance.
Is that the correct wording?
-It is the correct wording.
I think I've probably used those words.
Here's where we are.
The scientists have made it clear to us that --
they made it clear, three years ago,
that we had 12 years
within which to make the most critical decisions,
in order to avoid
the worst consequences of the climate crisis.
So, we lost three years with President Trump.
Now, we're trying to make up for it
and we're trying to accelerate.
We have nine years, within which,
if we don't do enough
to reduce the emissions that are already out there,
we can't achieve net zero by 2050.
If we don't do enough 2020, 2030,
we can't keep the Earth's temperature increase
to the 1.5° that the scientists say we should try to do.
We're at 1.2° now,
so we've got this tiny cushion of 0.3° of warming
before things really begin to
snowball out of all proportion.
And that's the fear people have.
We have to take advantage of these 10 years.
Right now, I'm proud to say,
President Biden's summit produced
55% of the global enterprise effort, global GDP.
Is committed on plans that will hold the 1.5°.
But that means we still have 45% on the outside of that
and we've got to pull them together.
Twenty countries, Seth,
are the equivalent of 80% of all the emissions.
So we're one of them. We're number 2.
China's number 1.
Russia, India, Mexico.
I mean, a whole group of countries
have got to step up in the next days, us included,
and we all have to do better and do more.
-And when you talk, I would imagine,
when you discuss the countries you just listed,
you know, the bigger...
-...the bigger emitters. The bigger economies.
-And I would imagine the approach you have with them all
has to be very different.
And, you know, based on being the secretary of state,
the diplomacy involved must be very delicate.
-Well, every country
brings its own set of challenges to the table
and every country believes that it needs
a certain something to be able to help them get there.
That's what we're busy doing right now.
We have a great team of people,
experts, many of whom have negotiated the Paris Agreement
and have been to the other meetings over the years.
So, I think we have a good sense
of where we have to go and how we get there.
We've got to help some countries to make the leap
that it's better on the other side, here.
This is not a choice
between protecting the environment
or having a strong economy.
This, they both can come together.
And what we know is that the job creation here
will be just stunning.
I mean, sometimes, you know,
I think about the United States of America
invented the Internet. We went to the Moon.
We have a rover on Mars.
We can remotely send it around Mars.
We do incredible things, but we can't send an electron
from California to New York in the year 2021.
That's crazy, and it's insulting
because we could have an energy system
that's more efficient, that's more effective, that's cheaper.
And we can use AI, artificial intelligence.
We can use quantum computing.
We could be ahead of this curve.
And we want -- President Biden wants --
the United States to lead the effort
to develop the new technologies to create the capacity
to make this transition effectively and on time.
And it's all about kids.
You have kids. I have kids, grandkids.
-Yeah. -This really is
their world we're talking about
and we need to get our act together.
-I'm glad you mentioned kids because I have one last question
I want to leave you with. The last time I saw you,
we were out and I had my son
and we were both wearing straw hats
and my son took off his straw hat
and I put his straw hat on top of my straw hat
and I'd forgotten that I had done that.
And then I saw you and I went over and said hello.
Did you know that I was wearing two straw hats?
[ Laughter ]
-Not only did I know
that you were wearing two straw hats,
but when I saw that, when I saw you,
I said to myself that George Bush got Will Ferrell
and I got a guy who wears two hats.
What the hell is going on here? -How dare you!
[ Laughter ] How dare you, sir!
John Kerry, everybody.