John Kerry blasts climate 'Neanderthals', questions Adani mine
September 3, 2019
Sydney Morning Herald
Former US Secretary of State John Kerry has implored policymakers to consider the jobs being created by the transition to renewable energy not just those lost as the fossil fuel industry declined.
In a speech in Melbourne on Tuesday, where he also questioned the wisdom of the Adani coal mine development in Queensland, Mr Kerry said solar energy could create "millions upon millions of jobs" pointing to the sector's surging performance in the United States.
Former US Secretary of State John Kerry after speaking at the food expo Global Table in Melbourne on Tuesday.
"Nobody's talking about making people unemployed, we're talking about transitioning to better jobs. (The) fastest growing job in the United States of America today - solar power technician. Second fastest growing job in America today - wind power turbine technician," he said, quoting official statistics.
"There are 300,000 solar workers in America today, there are somewhere around 50,000 doing anything with coal," he said.
Mr Kerry was the keynote speaker at a major food expo in Melbourne called Global Table, where more than 2700 delegates from Australia and overseas are meeting. He served as Secretary of State under President Barack Obama signing the Paris Climate Accord during his time in the role.
“We can’t just sit on our asses and leave the political process to Neanderthals, who don’t want to believe in the future, simple,” he said.
Mr Kerry covered a range of other topics including ocean pollution, electric vehicles, children's health and more.
Mr Kerry said the need to feed a global population expected to grow to nine billion people in 35 years was one of the world's greatest challenges, as he blasted the amount of food that was wasted.
"We waste a third of the food that we produce, one-third. And yet people are dying, and people go to bed hungry," he said.
"Right now today one in every nine people wakes up in the morning with hunger pangs, and they go to bed with an empty stomach. Consider that today, nearly half of child deaths worldwide are rooted in under-nutrition and in the lack of healthy food.
A climate activist has locked himself to machinery at Adani’s Queensland mine site in defiance of the state government’s move to outlaw lock-on protest devices.
"We're talking about 8000 children dying every single day, because they aren't getting basic nourishment."
After the speech Mr Kerry told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald that he was surprised that the Adani coal mine was being built.
"We shouldn't be building huge coal infrastructure going forward. We need to be much more creative and much more disposed to push the curve on the other alternatives," he said.
He said he understood that the coal mine had created considerable division in Australia and he understood why.
Asked about the role of jobs attached to coal mining Mr Kerry said it was not "a jobs or else" question.
"It isn't going to do you any good to pretend you're going to have great jobs for the long term with coal when in fact it's going to be supplanted, it is not a fuel of the future, and it's going to cost you a lot more to undo the damages that come from climate change than it is to make the adjustment. A great deal more," he said.
On electric vehicles (EVs) Mr Kerry urged US President Donald Trump to push carmakers to accelerate the transition to EVs.
"I think the President of the United States needs to summon all of the auto-makers to the White House," he said.
"Why can't the car that you're making now be made an electric car. Why can't we scale a transition all together. And set a target date that's way ahead of 2050, or 2039. Mercedes, Volkswagen, BMW a bunch of people have said 'we're going electric', but we can't take 20 years or 25 years to do it.
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