Christiana Figueres: Today, February 19, 2021,

at the beginning of a crucial year and a crucial decade

for confronting the climate crisis,

the United States rejoins the Paris Climate Agreement

after four years of absence.

Unanimously adopted by 195 nations,

the Paris Agreement came into force in 2016,

establishing targets and mechanisms

to lead the global economy to a zero-emissions future.

It was one of the most extraordinary examples of multilateralism ever,

and one which I had the privilege to coordinate.

One year later, the United States withdrew.

The Biden-Harris administration is now bringing the United States back

and has expressed strong commitment to responsible climate action.

The two men you are about to see both played essential roles

in birthing the Paris Agreement in 2015.

Former Vice President Al Gore, a lifelong climate expert,

made key contributions to the diplomatic process.

John Kerry was the US Secretary of State

and head of the US delegation.

With his granddaughter sitting on his lap,

he signed the Paris Agreement on behalf of the United States.

He is now the US Special Envoy for Climate.

TED Countdown has invited Al Gore to interview John Kerry

as he begins his new role.

Over to both of them.

Al Gore: Well, thank you, Christiana,

and John Kerry, thank you so much for doing this interview.

I have to say on a personal basis,

I was just absolutely thrilled when President Biden,

then president-elect,

announced you were going to be taking on this incredibly important role.

And thank you for doing it.

Let me just start by welcoming you to TED Countdown and asking you,

how are you feeling as you step back into the middle of this issue

that has been close to your heart for so long?

John Kerry: Well, I feel safer being here with you.

I honestly, I feel very energized, very focused.

I think it's a privilege to be able to take on this task.

And as you know better than anybody,

it's going to take everybody coming together.

There's going to have to be a massive movement of people

to do what we have to do.

So I feel privileged to be part of it,

and I'm honored to be here with you on this important day.

AG: Well, it's been a privilege

to be able to work with a dear friend for so long on this crisis.

And, of course, on this historic day,

when the United States now formally and legally rejoins

the Paris Agreement,

we have to acknowledge

that the world is lagging behind the pace of change needed

to successfully confront the climate crisis,

because even if all countries kept the commitments

made under the Paris Agreement --

and I watched you sign it, you had your grandchild with you --

I was there at the U.N, that was an inspiring moment,

you signed on behalf of the United States,

but even if all of those pledges were kept

they're not strong enough to keep the global temperature increase

well below two degrees or below 1.5 degrees,

and emissions are still rising.

So what needs to happen here in the US and globally

in order to accelerate the pace of change?

JK: Well, Al, you're absolutely correct.

It's a very significant day, a day that never had to happen,

America returning to this agreement.

It is so sad that our previous president, without any scientific basis,

without any legitimate economic rationale,

decided to pull America out.

And it hurt us and it hurt the world.

Now we have an opportunity to try to make that up.

And I approach that job with a lot of humility

for the agony of the last four years of not moving faster.

But we have to simply up our ambition on a global basis.

United States is 15 percent of all the emissions.

China is 30 percent.

EU is somewhere around 14, 11, depends who you talk to.

And India is about seven.

So you add all those together, just four entities,

and you've got well over 60 percent of all the emissions in the world.

And yet none of those nations

are at this moment doing enough

to be able to get done what has to be done,

let alone many others, at lower levels of emission.

It's going to take all of us.

Even if tomorrow China went to zero,

or the United States went to zero,

you know full well, Al, we're still not going to get there.

We all have to be reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

We have to do it much more rapidly.

So the meeting in Glasgow rises in its importance.

You and I, we've been to these meetings

since way back in the beginning of the '90s with Rio

and even before, some of them parliamentary meetings.

And we're at this most critical moment

where we have a capacity to define the decade of the '20s,

which will really make or break us

in our ability to get to a 2050 net zero carbon economy.

And so we all have to raise our ambition.

That means coal has got to phase down faster.

It means we've got to deploy renewables,

all forms of alternative, renewable, sustainable energy.

We've got to push the curve of discovery intensely.

Whether we get to hydrogen economy or battery storage

or any number of technologies,

we are going to have to have an all-of-the-above approach

to getting where we need to go

to meet the target in this next 10 years.

And I think Glasgow has to not only have countries come and raise ambition,

but those countries are going to have to define

in real terms,

what their road map is for the next 10 years,

then the next 30 years,

so that we're really talking a reality

that we've never been able to completely assemble

at any of these meetings thus far.

AG: Well, hearing you talk, John,

just highlights how painful it's been for the US to be absent

from the international effort for the last four years,

and again, it makes me so happy President Biden has brought us back

into the Paris Agreement.

After this four year hiatus,

how are you personally, as our Climate Envoy,

planning to approach re-entry into the conversation?

I know you've already started it,

but is there anything tricky about that?

Or I guess everything is tricky about it, but how are you planning to do it?

JK: Well, I'm planning, first of all, to do it with humility,

because I think it's not appropriate for the United States to leap back in

and start telling everybody what has to happen.

We have to listen.

We have to work very, very closely with other countries,

many of whom have been carrying the load for the last four years

in the absence of the United States.

I don't think we come in, Al, I want to emphasize this --

I don't believe we come to the table with our heads hanging down

on behalf of many of our own efforts,

because, as you know, President Obama worked very hard

and we all did, together with you and others,

to get the Paris Agreement.

And we also have 38 states in America

that have passed renewable portfolio laws.

And during the four years of Trump being out,

the governors of those 38 states, Republican and Democrat alike,

continued to push forward and we're still in movement.

And more than a thousand mayors,

the mayors of our biggest cities in America,

all have forged ahead.

So it's not a totally, abjectly miserable story by the United States.

I think we can come back and earn our credibility

by stepping up in the next month or two

with a strong national determined contribution.

We're going to have a summit on April, 22.

That summit will bring together the major emitting nations of the world again.

And because, as you recall in Paris,

a number of nations felt left out of the conversation.

The island states, some of the poorer nations, Bangladesh, others.

And so we're going to bring those stakeholders to the table,

as well as the big emitters and developed countries,

so that they can be heard from the get-go.

And as we head on into Glasgow,

hopefully we'll be building a bigger momentum

and we'll have a larger consensus.

And that's our goal --

have the summit, raise ambition,

announce our national determined contribution,

begin to break ground on entirely new initiatives,

build towards the biodiversity convention in China,

even though we're not a party, we want to be helpful,

and then go into the G7, the G20, the UNGA,

the meeting of the United Nations in the fall,

reconvene and reenergize, going for the last six weeks into Glasgow.

In my judgment, Glasgow, and you'd know this full well,

I think Glasgow is the last, best hope we have

for our nations to really set us on that path.

And so, you know, one key is, as I said, raising ambition.

The other is defining how you're going to get there,

and then the third is finance.

We've got to bring an unprecedented global finance plan to the table.

And I think we're already working with private sector entities.

I believe there's a way to do that in a very exciting way.

AG: Well, that's encouraging,

and I'm going to come back to that in just a moment.

But I'm glad you made those points about state and local governments

actually moving forward during the last four years.

A lot of US private companies have as well.

And already I'm extremely encouraged by the suite of executive actions

that President Biden has already taken

during his first weeks in office.

And there's more to come.

There's also a push for legislative action

to invest in the fantastic new opportunities

in clean energy, electric vehicles and more.

Yet you and I have both seen the difficulties

of this approach in the past.

How can we use all of this activity

to well and truly convince the world

that America is genuinely back to being part of the solution?

I know we are.

You know we are,

but we've got to really restore that confidence.

I think your appointment went a long way to doing that.

But what else can we do to gain back the world's confidence?

JK: Well, we have to be honest and forthright and direct

about the things that we're prepared to do.

And they have to be things we're really going to do.

We just held a meeting a few days ago with all of the domestic entities

that President Biden has ordered to come to the table

and be part of this effort.

This is an all-of-government effort now.

So we will have the Energy Department, the Homeland Security Department,

the Defense Department, the Treasury.

I mean, Janet Yellen was there talking about how she's going to work

and we're going to work together to try to mobilize some of the finance.

So I think, you know,

we're not going to convince anybody by just saying it.

Nor should we.

We have to do it.

And I think the actions that we put together

shortly after President Biden achieves the COVID legislation here,

he will almost immediately introduce the rebuild effort,

the infrastructure components,

and those will be very much engaged in building out America's grid capacity,

doing things that we should have done years ago

to facilitate the transmission of electricity

from one part of the country to another,

whether it's renewable or otherwise.

We just don't have that ability now.

We have a queue of backed up projects

sitting in one of our regulatory agencies

which have got to be broken free.

And by creating this all-of-government effort, Al,

our hope is we're really going to be able to do that.

The other thing that we're doing is I'm reaching out, very rapidly,

to colleagues all around the world.

We've had meetings already, discussions with India,

with Latin American countries,

with European countries,

with the European Commission and others.

And we're going to try to build as much energy and momentum as possible

towards these various benchmarks that I've talked about.

And I mean, the proof will be in the pudding.

We're going to have to show people that we've got a strong NDC,

we're actually implementing, we're passing legislation,

and we're moving forward in a collegiate manner

with other countries around the world.

For instance, I've talked to Australia, we had a very good conversation.