John Kerry, the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, has been pushing ahead with an ultra-aggressive and progressive climate agenda, trying to spread his message and that of the Biden administration around the world.
But, this week, one major international official publicly slammed Kerry’s agenda.
On Monday, Grant Shapps, the secretary for British Energy Security and Net Zero, said the calls for a rapid shift away from fossil fuels are just plain stupid.
He made his comments as President Joe Biden and King Charles III participated in a climate summit between the U.S. and UK. Shapps’ comments were in response to what Wael Sawan, the CEO of Shell, said last week, that the energy system around the world will still “desperately need oil and gas,” adding the development of green energy isn’t yet advanced sufficiently to allow countries to all-out do away with fossil fuels.
In response to that, Shapps said:
“There always has to be a transition … but it doesn’t just happen overnight. In fact, it’s idiotic to suggest you can. If you tried to, you simply impoverish people and tell people they can no longer drive and they can no longer heat their homes.”
Kerry sat down with an interview with the BBC later that day, and tried to contrast what Shapps said. Kerry claimed that any companies that were changing the climate commitments they had made would be “moving in the wrong direction.”
Instead of a slow transition to green energy, Kerry said the process should be accelerated.
He said during the interview:
“What we need are company and chief executives looking to the future and investing in that future and accelerating the transition to that future. Look, in the last few days, we’ve had scientists say this is terrifying. We have scientists saying we are in uncharted territory.”
The climate summit between top U.S. and UK officials on Monday came at a time when many Western leaders and governments have been pushing companies to adopt green goals that are very aggressive. They ultimately want to replace traditional power that uses fossil fuels with other green alternatives, including solar and wind power.
Since he entered the White House in 2021, Biden has made it one of his top priorities to move away from fossil fuels. He’s aimed to reduce emissions and turn toward electrical options, taking particular aim at the sectors of home appliances, transportation and power.
It’s going to be a long uphill climb to get there, though. Recent data from the International Energy Agency found that natural gas, coal and oil account for roughly 81% of the worldwide total supply of energy.
That’s a significant amount, of course, and not something that can just be replaced overnight, as Shapps was referring to.
Apparently, though, Biden and Kerry are so out of touch that they believe that somehow all of that energy can be replaced by alternative green sources in a flash.
