John Kerry exits as special climate envoy – but he isn’t done with politics quite yet

John Kerry, who has led the United States’ climate mission on the global stage for the past three years,is leaving his post on Wednesday.

The special presidential envoy for climate, 80, announced that he was stepping down in January.

“In three years, Secretary Kerry has tirelessly trekked around the world – bringing American climate leadership back from the brink and marshalling countries around the world to take historic action to confront the climate crisis,” said White House chief of Staff, Jeff Zients, in a statement to The Independent, at the time.

Mr Kerry, a longtime senator and secretary of state under Barack Obama, was the obvious choice for President Joe Biden, who created the role after winning the White House in 2020.

Appointing Mr Kerry to lead negotiations more typically handled by non-public facing bureaucrats signalled that America was back in the global climate fight after spending four years out in the wilderness under former president Donald Trump.

“The world will know that one of my closest friends, John Kerry, is speaking for America on one of the most pressing threats of our time,” Mr Biden said.

But the selection of Mr Kerry also provoked the ire of Republicans and conservative media who goaded him over international trips, and claimed that he regularly traveled by private jet.

Mr Kerry pushed back on that accusation during a House committee hearing last year, calling it “one of the most outrageously persistent lies that I hear”.

“I don’t own a private jet. I personally have never owned a private jet,” he said. A family jet belonging primarily to his wife, the billionaire philanthropist Teresa Heinz, had been sold, he said – though he did not expand on when.

Mr Kerry was a key negotiator in the