FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 27, 2020

For Further Information:
Virginia Rodino, Press Secretary, virginia@howiehawkins.us
Robert Smith, Deputy Press Secretary, robert@howiehawkins.us

RELEASE: Kerry Means Militarization of US Climate Policy

At the State Department, Kerry expanded the Global Shale Gas Initiative he inherited from Hillary Clinton to 30 additional countries. In the Paris Climate Agreement agreed to at the end of 2015, Kerry led successful US efforts to ensure carbon reduction commitments were not binding on nations.

Kerry was committed to the Obama-Biden administration’s “all-of-the-above” energy policy. In 2015 he promoted oil, saying, “I don’t see oil changing significantly, and I don’t think most of the market folks I talk to anywhere in the near term. And who knows if even ever, depending on what happens with these other market signals and choices that people make. Now, we’re going to be using oil for years and years to come in one fashion or another.”

On his way out the door of the State Department in January 2017, Kerry came out for new nuclear power plants. In July this year, Kerry got new nuclear power plants included in the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force statement on climate policy along with support for developing carbon capture and sequestration technology, which would supposedly allow the continued “safe” burning of coal, oil, gas, and biomass for power.

The American Security Project, the parent organization of Kerry’s World War Zero, welcomed Kerry’s appointment with a militaristic statement on “the US Climate Security Battle.” It called for increased military spending on “Military Base Resilience” to adapt to rising sea levels and increased military deployments against “America’s Great Power Competitors” in oil and gas rich waters, namely, China in the South China Sea and Russia in the Arctic Ocean.

In a previous statement, the American Security Project, on whose board Kerry sits, called for increased funding for Border Patrol and detention facilities to capture the expected increase in climate refugees.

“With Kerry as the climate envoy, climate security will mean adapting to climate change with a Fortress America policy against climate refugees and aggressive military backing for US-based petro-capitalists against their Russian and Chinese competitors,” Hawkins said.

“Real climate security would mean a Global Green New Deal that rapidly replaces fossil fuels with clean energy and returns atmospheric carbon to a safe level. Every dollar spent on detaining climate refugees and projecting military power into oil and gas regions is a dollar diverted from building climate solutions like solar and wind power, smart grids, energy storage, electrified transportation, building heat pumps, zero-emissions manufacturing, regenerative agriculture, and forestation,” Hawkins said.

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