John Kerry gets an easy ride from the climate establishment

For climate campaigners, Donald Trump was the anti-Christ, pooh-poohing climate change and withdrawing the US from the Paris climate agreement. But what of the Biden administration – is it really going to make the climate lobby any happier?

Things may be a little clearer following the visit to Britain of John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, who gave the annual Fulbright lecture at King’s College London on Friday evening. He was certainly keen to assert that America is now wearing a different pair of boots than it was under Trump, telling his audience ‘you need guideposts, and unfortunately in my country many of those guideposts were torn down.’

Kerry is very good at evangelising, preaching that the world is in peril and that it is down to all of us to do something about it. I wonder how many of his audience even questioned his claim that 10 million people are dying annually from the heat – a statistic that he used to illustrate the urgency of action in what he referred to as the world’s hottest year ever (a premature claim given that there are another three weeks to go yet).