On his first day as president, Joe Biden signed a letter of acceptance that set in motion the 30-day process for the United States to re-join the Paris Agreement on climate. On the day the US returns to the accord, John Kerry, the US Special Envoy for Climate, sits down with Nobel Laureate Al Gore to discuss the make-or-break decade ahead of us. Listen as Kerry lays out how the US fits into the global plan to get to net-zero emissions, explains why the COP26 UN climate conference could be humanity's "last best hope" to build international momentum and explores the role of business and youth activists in promoting environmental justice. (This interview features an introduction from Christiana Figueres, the principal architect of the Paris Agreement.)

Today, 19th of February, 2021, at the beginning of a crucial year and a crucial decade for confronting the climate crisis, the United States rejoins the Paris Climate Agreement after 4 years of absence.

Unanimously adopted by 195 nations, The Paris Agreement came into force in 2016, establishing targets and mechanisms to lead the global economy to a zero-emissions future.

It was 1 of the most extraordinary examples of multilateralism ever, and 1 which I had the privilege to coordinate.

1 year later, the United States withdrew.

The Biden-Harris administration is now bringing the United States back and has expressed strong commitment to responsible climate action.

The 2 men you're about to see both played essential roles in birthing the Paris Agreement in 2015.

Former Vice President Al Gore, a lifelong climate expert, made key contributions to the diplomatic process.

With his granddaughter sitting on his lap, he signed the Paris Agreement on behalf of the United States.

He is now the US Special Envoy for Climate.

Ted Countdown has invited Al Gore to interview John Kerry as he begins his new role.

And John Kerry, thank you so much for doing this interview.

I have to say on a personal basis, I was just absolutely thrilled when President Biden, then President-elect announced you were gonna be taking on this incredibly important role and thank you for doing it.

Let me just start by welcoming you to TED Countdown and asking you, how are you feeling as you step back into the middle of this issue that has been close to your heart for so long?

Honestly, I feel very energized, very focused.

I think it's a privilege to be able to take on this task.

And as you know better than anybody, it's going to take everybody coming together.

There's going to have to be a massive movement of people to do what we have to do.

So I just, I feel privileged to be part of it and I'm honored to be here with you on this important day.

Well, it's been a privilege to be able to work with a dear friend for so long on this crisis.

And of course, on this historic day, when the United States now formally and legally rejoins the Paris Agreement, We have to acknowledge that the world is lagging behind the pace of change needed to successfully confront the climate crisis, because even if all countries kept the commitments made under the Paris Agreement, and I watched you sign it.

You signed on behalf of the United States.

But even if all of those pledges were kept, they're not strong enough to keep the global temperature increase well below 2 degrees or below 1.5 degrees and emissions are still rising.

So what needs to happen here in the US and globally in order to accelerate the pace of change?

It's a very significant day, a day that never had to happen, America returning to this agreement.

It is so sad that our previous president, without any scientific basis, without any legitimate economic rationale, decided to pull America out.

Now we have an opportunity to try to make that up.

And I approach that job with a lot of humility for the agony of the last 4 years of not moving faster.

But we have to simply up our ambition on a global basis.

United States is 15% of all the emissions.

EU is somewhere around 14, 11, depends who you talk to.

So you add all those together, just 4 entities, and you've got well over 60% of all the emissions in the world, and yet none of those nations are at this moment doing enough to be able to get done what has to be done, let alone many others at lower levels of emission.

It's gonna take all of us, even if tomorrow China went to 0 or the United States went to 0, you know full well, Al, we're still not gonna get there.

We all have to be reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

So the meeting in Glasgow rises in its importance.

You and I, we've been to these meetings since way back in the beginning of the 90s with Rio and even before some of them parliamentary meetings.

And we're at this most critical moment where we have a capacity to define the decade of the 20s, which will really make or break us in our ability to get to a 2050 net 0 carbon economy.

And so we all have to raise our ambition.

That means coal has got to phase down faster.

It means we've got to deploy renewables, all forms of alternative, renewable, sustainable energy.

We've got to push the curve of discovery intensely.

Whether we get to hydrogen economy or battery storage or any number of technologies, we are going to have to have an all of the above approach to getting where we need to go to meet the target in this next 10 years.

I think Glasgow has to not only have countries come and raise ambition, but those countries are going to have to define in real terms what their roadmap is for the next 10 years, then the next 30 years, so that we're really talking a reality that we've never been able to completely assemble at any of these meetings thus far.

Well, hearing you talk, John, just highlights how painful it's been for the US to be absent from the international effort for the last 4 years.

And again, it makes me so happy President Biden has brought us back into the Paris Agreement.

After this four-year hiatus, how are you personally, as our climate envoy, planning to approach re-entry into the conversation?

I know you've already started it, but is there anything tricky about that?

Or I guess everything is tricky about it.

Well, I'm planning, first of all, to do it with humility, because I think it's not appropriate for the United States to leap back in and start telling everybody what has to happen.

We have to work very, very closely with other countries, many of whom have been carrying the load for the last 4 years in the absence of the United States.

I don't think we come in, Al, I want to emphasize this.

I don't believe we come to the table with our heads hanging down on behalf of many of our own efforts, because as you know, President Obama worked very hard, and we all did, together with you and others, to get the Paris Agreement.

And we also have 38 states in America that have passed renewable portfolio laws.

And during the 4 years of Trump being out, the governors of those 38 states, Republican and Democrat alike, continued to push forward in the We're Still In movement.

And more than a thousand mayors, mayors of our biggest cities in America all have forged ahead.

So it's not a totally abjectly miserable story by the United States.

I think we can come back and earn our credibility by stepping up in the next month or 2 with a strong national determined contribution.

We're going to have a summit in April, April 22nd.

That summit will bring together the major emitting nations of the world again.

And because as you recall in Paris, a number of nations felt left out of the conversation, the island states, some of the poorer nations, Bangladesh, others.

And so we're gonna bring those stakeholders to the table as well as the big emitters and developed countries so that they can be heard from the get-go.

And as we head on into Glasgow, hopefully we'll be building a bigger momentum and we'll have a larger consensus.

Have the summit, raise ambition, announce our national determined contribution, begin to break ground on entirely new initiatives, build towards the biodiversity convention in China, even though we're not a party, we want to be helpful.

And then go into the G7, the G20, the UNGA, the meeting of the United Nations in the fall, reconvene and re-energize going for the last 6 weeks into Glasgow.

In my judgment, Glasgow, and you'd know this full well, I think Glasgow is the last best hope we have for nations to really set us on that path.

And so, you know, 1 key is, as I said, raising ambition.

The other is defining how you're gonna get there.

We've got to bring an unprecedented global finance plan to the table.

And I think we're already working with private sector entities.

I believe there's a way to do that in a very exciting way.

Well, that's encouraging, and I'm going to come back to that in just a moment.

But I'm glad you made those points about state and local governments actually moving forward during the last 4 years.

A lot of US private companies have as well.

And already, I'm extremely encouraged by the suite of executive actions that President Biden has already taken during his first weeks in office, and there's more to come.

There's also a push for legislative action to invest in the fantastic new opportunities in clean energy, electric vehicles, and more.

Yet you and I have both seen the difficulties of this approach in the past.

How can we use all of this activity to well and truly convince the world that America is genuinely back to being part of the solution?

I know we are, You know we are, but we've got to really restore that confidence.

I think your appointment went a long way to doing that, but what else can we do to gain back the world's confidence?

Well, We have to be honest and forthright, I mean direct about the things that we're prepared to do.

And they have to be things we're really gonna do.

We just held a meeting a few days ago with all of the domestic entities that President Biden has ordered to come to the table and be part of this effort.

So we will have the energy department, the Homeland Security Department, the Defense Department, the Treasury.

I mean, Janet Yellen was there talking about how she's going to work and we're going to work together to try to mobilize some of the finance.

So I think, you know, we're not going to convince anybody by just saying it, nor should we.

And I think the actions that we put together shortly after President Biden achieves the COVID legislation here, he will almost immediately introduce the rebuild effort, the infrastructure components.

And those will be very much engaged in building out America's grid capacity, doing things that we should have done years ago to facilitate the transmission of electricity from 1 part of the country to another, whether it's renewable or otherwise.

We have a queue of backed up projects sitting in 1 of our regulatory agencies, which have got to be broken free.

And by creating this all of government effort, Al, our hope is we're really going to be able to do that.

The other thing that we're doing is I'm reaching out very rapidly to colleagues all around the world.

We've had meetings already, discussions with India, with Latin American countries, with European countries, with the European commission, others.

And we're gonna try to build as much energy and momentum as possible towards these various benchmarks that I've talked about.

And it's only, I mean, the proof will be in the pudding.

We're gonna have to show people that we've got a strong NDC.

We're actually implementing We're passing legislation and we're moving forward in a collegiate manner with Other countries around the world for instance.

We had a very good conversation Australia's had some differences with us.

We've not been able to get on the same page completely.

That was 1 of the problems in Madrid, as you recall, together with Brazil.

Well, I've reached out to Brazil already.

My hope is that we can build some new coalitions and approach this, hopefully, in a new way.

And I do agree with your statement earlier that the COP26 conference in Glasgow this fall, it may be the world's last best chance.

From your perspective, what would you list as the priorities for ensuring that this Glasgow conference is a success.

I think that perhaps 1 of the single most important things, which is why we're focused on this summit of ours, is to get the 17 nations that produce the vast majority of emissions on the same page of committing to 2050 net 0, committing to this decade having a roadmap that is going to lay down how they are going to accelerate the reduction of emissions in a way that keeps 1.5 degrees as a floor alive, and also in a way that guarantees that we are seeing the roadmap to get to net 0.

I will personally be dissatisfied and disappointed if for our children's sake and our grandkids' sake, we can't say that when these adults came together to make this kind of a decision, we didn't actually make it.

And I think if we can show people we're actually on the road, I think you believe this as much as I do, that I mean you're even more, you're far more knowledgeable than I am about some of the technologies and you've helped break ground on some of them, the pace at which we are now beginning to accelerate, I mean, the reduction in cost of solar, the movement in storage and other kinds of things, I'm convinced we're gonna find 1 breakthrough or another.

I don't know what it's gonna be, but I do know that when we push the curve and we put the resources to work, the innovative, creative capacity of humankind is such that we have an ability to surprise ourselves.

When we went to the moon, in this incredible backdrop behind you, That's exactly what we did.

And people today use products in everyday household use that came out of that quest that you never would have anticipated.

We can move faster to electric vehicles, no question in my mind.

We can absolutely phase down coal-fired emissions faster than we are in a plan to do it.

The test is going to be whether we create the energy and momentum necessary to actually get those choices made.

1 of the big challenges is 1 you referred to earlier on finance.

Wealthy countries have promised financial assistance to the less wealthy countries to help them out with cutting emissions and to help them cope with the impacts of the climate crisis.

But of course, we need to continue to work to meet this commitment, especially as countries around the world rebuild their economies in the wake of this pandemic.

What are some of the most effective ways in which the wealthier countries can help those that don't have as many resources and and why is this so important for the world to move forward?

It's so important because it's the only way we're gonna get there.

I don't believe that any government has either the money or the inclination to be able to do what's necessary here.

I believe the private sector, particularly driven by venture capital investment, by the quest to be able to create a product that then can help create wealth and actually provide a benefit to humankind, drives a lot of things that we've done all through history.

And I don't think it'll be any different now.

I think the question is, can we pull together enough nations to leverage a uniform approach to the judgment about the kinds of investments that are being made.

And I believe that if we can standardize to some degree with disclosure requirements, which Janet Yellen has now seized of that issue, And Europe, there are folks working on that and the European Commission elsewhere.

If we could actually find a way to come together and harmonize some of those definitions and the marketplace begins to make those judgments as they qualify risk, looking way out.

Risk because of climate crisis for investing is very, very real.

We spent $265 billion in America 2 years ago, just cleaning up after 3 storms, Maria, Harvey and Irma.

And it's crazy, you spend 265 billion to clean up after the storms, but we can't put 100 billion together for the green climate fund.

And I think business, I'm convinced of this.

A lot of people will doubt me and say, have I lost my mind?

But I'm convinced the private sector is going to be critical, if not the key to helping to make this happen.

We've, I've talked to the, to the IMF, we'll be talking with the World Bank.

We're going to try to bring our other, our own finance development corporation in America.

All of these things can help leverage investment into the sectors that can make the greatest difference to the rapid reduction of greenhouse gases.

And I think people are going to get very excited about where this money is going to go and how much it is going to be.

And my hope is, in a matter of weeks, to be in a position to make a couple of announcements with respect to that that could be helpful in building some of this momentum.

Sounds like some major news coming in a couple of weeks.

And just 1 example on the example you used, the point about businessmen.

I have a friend in Australia, Mike Canenbrooks, building a long undersea cable from the northern territories of Australia to take renewable electricity to Singapore.

You have made the point about the need for the US to approach this with humility a number of times.

In that spirit, what lessons can a country like ours learn from some of the lower-income nations that are already beginning to tackle climate change?

Well, I think 1 of the most important things, Al, is to make sure that central to this transformation, to this transition to the new energy economy, central to it is environmental justice, is that we don't leave people behind, that we're not making whole communities the recipients of the downside of some particular choice, that the diesel trucks, for instance, aren't all being routed through a particular low-income community that doesn't have the ability to make a different political decision.

I think it is vital for the developed world to recognize that there are nations, 138 nations or more, way below 1% in terms of emissions.

And they're looking around, some of them, like Tommy Remengenau, the president of Palau, who no longer can consider adaptation.

He's got to figure out where his people are gonna go live, as do other very low-lying areas in the ocean.

So that impact on people is really not known by the vast majority of people who live pretty good lives in a lot of countries in the world.

And we have a responsibility to make sure that we're learning the lesson of their lives and of their hopes and aspirations here.

And if here in the US, if we had paid more attention to the differential impact on black, brown and indigenous communities, we would have had a better early warning of what the whole country was facing.

But let me shift subjects and ask you about China.

I know that you are close friends with Xi Jinping, as I have been over the years, and I was very happy when he was brought out of retirement to play the lead role for them.

But the US is now in the middle of a somewhat contentious relationship with China.

But successfully solving the climate crisis is going to require collaboration between the US and China.

We're the 2 biggest emitters and the 2 biggest economies.

How can this collaboration be shaped in your view?

I know you played a role as Joe Biden did before the Paris agreement in getting our 2 countries together.

As you just said, if we can't, I mean, if we don't get China to be cooperating and partnering with the rest of the world on this, we don't solve the problem.

And we, unfortunately, we see too much investment in China right now in coal still.

I was on a panel with Xie Zhenhua several months before the election by the University of California.

And we had a very constructive conversation.

My hope is that that will continue and can continue and that China will be just as constructive, if not more so in this endeavor than they were in 2013 as we began the process to build up to Paris.

Well, that relationship is absolutely crucial.

But in order to cover all the ground I want to cover here, let me shift again and ask you, What role do you expect that big corporations and also smaller businesses will play in moving this green transition forward?

I think they're the biggest single players in it.

I mean, governments are important, and governments can and have made a difference with tax credits.

For instance, our solar tax credit made an enormous difference and it will make 1 going forward.

And even in the middle of COVID, we've been able to hold onto that.

But we need to grow those kinds of efforts.

But in the end, it's not gonna be government cash that makes this happen.

It's going to be the private sector investment that is coming in because it's the right thing to do, because it's also smart investing.

And the truth is You can talk to many of the, and you have, you're 1 of the investors actually, Al.

You and others have proven that you can invest in this sector of dealing with climate or environment or sustainability, whether it's ESG or it's pure climate.

There are ways to have a good return on money.

And during the last couple of years, we had something like $13 to $17 trillion sitting in parked banking situations around the world in net negative interest.

In other words, they were paying for the privilege of sitting there, not invested in something.

And so I think there's just a massive opportunity here.

And Most of the CEOs I'm talking to at least now are increasingly aware of the potential of these alternatives.

And you were an early, I don't know if you invested in it or not, but I know you're involved with Tesla or have been.

I mean, Tesla is the most highly valued automobile company in the world, and it only makes 1 thing, electric car.

If that isn't a message to people, I don't know what is.

I wish I had invested in Tesla, John, but I'm a huge fan of Elon Musk and what he's doing.

And I'm just curious, what you think, in practical terms, is the real impact for change coming from these youth movements like Fridays for the Future?

I think it's been gigantic and spectacular.

And in the best traditions of what young people do and have done historically, I mean, as you recall, in America at least, in the 1960s, it was young people who drove the environment movement, the peace movement, the women's movement, the civil rights movement, and they were willing to put their lives on the line.

And Greta has been just unbelievable in the way in which she has held adults accountable.

And it has created this wonderful movement.

I've met so many young people, many of whom have worked in 1 fashion or another with me in the last few years, who were brought to it from Fridays for the Future, from the Sunrise Movement.

It's all that focused, youthful idealism and energy, and it demands to be heard.

I think all of us, we should be ashamed of ourselves that we have to have people who are then 16 or

not going to school to get our attention.

I mean, what the hell is the matter with adult leadership that's not leadership at all?

So I salute her and all the young people who put themselves on the line, but I invite them, it's not enough.

You've gotta then, and I said this during the course of the election, where I hope we created a lot of new voters, and I think environment, specifically climate crisis, became a real voting issue this year, just as it was back in the 1970, when we created the EPA and the Clean Air Act and a host of things.

And it proves that that kind of activism is necessary.

And I hope we're going to keep young people at the table here and finish the job.

And Another big movement that's having an impact is the environmental justice movement.

You referred to it earlier, and I'm so glad that President Biden is putting environmental justice at the heart of his climate agenda.

It might be good if I could ask you to just take a moment and tell people why that is such an important part of this issue.

Well, I think it's important part of this issue for many reasons.

The most basic is just moral, you know, what is morally right?

And how do you redress a wrong that has for too many years held people back, killed people by virtue of disease or other things and resulted in a basic inequality and unfairness in society.

And I think you share a feeling as I do, Al, that the fabric of a nation is built around certain organizational principles.

And if you're holding yourselves out as a nation to be 1 thing, i.e.

Equal opportunity and fairness and all people created equal and equal rights and so forth, if that's what you hold out there and it isn't there, eventually you get such a cynicism and such a backlash built up into your society that it doesn't hold together.

To some degree that is what we're seeing around the world today is this nationalistic populism that is driven by this heightened inequality that's come through globalization that has mostly enriched already fairly well-off folks.

See all John Kerry and Al Gore transcripts on Tedtalk

The US is back in the Paris Agreement. What's next?