Kerry’s Climate Negotiations With China Put Americans at Risk

This week, President Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry visited with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials in Beijing and returned empty handed.  According to Kerry, the purpose of his trip was to “break new ground” and reach an agreement on carbon-reduction plans for our two nations.  Perhaps the next Biden official to visit Beijing will seek to obtain a commitment from the CCP to stop acts of genocide.  This absurd trip is the result of the Biden Administration’s utterly misguided policy goals, which put all Americans and our economy at risk.

First, we should make something very clear: Regardless of one’s views on climate change, the fact that a role like the Special Envoy for Climate Change – or SPEC – even exists should be a concern for all Americans.  The SPEC role has never previously existed, yet it is currently treated as a Cabinet-level position and retains a spot on the National Security Council.  The Senate did not review or approve Kerry’s appointment to this role; indeed, the Senate has no authority to confirm the position.  Yet, this unappointed official was in Beijing, negotiating away our economic might with the Chinese Communist Party on behalf of the American government while unaccompanied by any Senate-confirmed official.  This flies in the face of our Constitution’s wise system of checks and balances.  As we saw when the Obama Administration “agreed” to the Iran Deal with the murderous regime in Tehran, subverting the Constitution by exercising Executive authority that does not exist can have serious consequences.

Beyond displaying the Biden Administration’s willful neglect of the Constitution, Kerry’s trip also lays bare the failed policy priorities of this Administration with respect to China.  There is no evidence – none – that Xi Jinping has any interest in sabotaging China’s economy in order to satisfy green climate activists.  In fact, the opposite is true.  Last year, the CCP approved enough permitting to build two new coal-fired power plants every week, a 50% increase from 2021.  Coal currently generates 64% of China’s electricity, and there is no reason to believe that China has better or cheaper options.  And Xi himself stated recently that the CCP’s decision-making with respect to energy “can’t be detached from reality.”  In a choice between economic growth or submitting to rigid climate policy, it is clear the CCP has made its decision.

The reality is this: Communist China has never been committed to meeting the climate demands of green activists, but it has been all too happy to use the West’s obsession with it in order to advance its own national interests.  When the CCP signed onto the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, it cleverly avoided possible punitive measures from the Obama Administration and the climate crowd in Brussels, while gaining a free pass to keep building as many coal-fired power plants as it wanted until 2030.  Nations like the United States have done hard work to lower our emissions by 5% since that time – a decrease, by the way, that is owed not to electric cars, or sunshine and windmills, but to the revolution in fracking and the Trump Administration’s efforts to establish energy independence with cheap, reliable, and clean natural gas.  China, to nobody’s surprise, has increased its carbon emissions by 12%.  If global climate change is a global problem, then it cannot be solved on the backs of the American people alone, particularly when the number one producer of climate-affecting emissions is China.  All we have done is sacrificed our energy dominance in bowing to the climate gods and ceded our economic might to the CCP.

When faced with this reality, any sensible Administration – regardless of its views on climate change – should understand that the CCP is not going to be a trusted partner in the effort to reduce emissions.  Unfortunately, the Biden Administration is allowing its own ideology to override common sense.  Its Inflation Reduction Act will only enrich China in the long term by doling out massive tax credits and grants to industries that are reliant on a supply of rare earth metals which China has stockpiled for decades.  Eighty percent of the solar panel industry runs through China, with some of it likely running through forced labor camps in Xinjiang, yet the Biden Administration is now funneling massive amounts of American taxpayer dollars into it.  And as for Biden’s climate envoy Kerry, there should be serious concern that he has been granted the authority to make concessions on issues related to Taiwan or other critical national security issues in exchange for reaching an agreement related to climate change.  Congress should reestablish its constitutional authority and ensure that nothing of the sort can possibly happen.

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