John Kerry Discovers the Power of the Private Sector

Plus, Jared Kushner at the ADL, Ken Weinstein on grand strategy, and the Jeffries guys on how to keep succeeding

John Kerry is 80 years old and has spent at least 50 years working for the government, so it’s somewhat amusing to see him belatedly discovering and appreciating the real power of the private sector.

Here is Kerry in a farewell interview with National Public Radio about his service as the first United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. “That’s one of the reasons why I’m transitioning out of this particular job, because I think that now the private sector is gonna be the key to our ability to be able to win this battle.”

Kerry explained about his future plans, “I’m gonna be directly involved in trying to help deploy the financing which will accelerate this transition. All the finance reports say, if you want to achieve Net Zero 2050, then it’s gonna cost about 2 and a half to 4 and half, five trillion dollars a year for the next 30 years. No government in the world, no government in the world has that money to put on the table, but the private sector does.”

The NPR reporter didn’t press Kerry on how precisely Kerry was going to “deploy the financing”—as a loan officer at a bank? As a portfolio manager at a venture fund? Investing his family money?

Kerry sounded similar themes in an exit interview with the Associated Press. From the AP dispatch:

Putting into action plans to reduce the use of fossil fuels and increase renewable energies is key and won’t be done so much by the public sector, where Kerry has spent nearly half a century, but instead by the private sector, he said.

The world needs to spend $2 trillion to $5 trillion a year combatting climate change in various ways. However, finding that amount of money won’t be easy.

“That’s one of the reasons why I am so focused on the private sector,” Kerry said. “The private sector does have — manages — trillions of dollars.

In both the AP and NPR interviews, Kerry dismissed the idea Trump beating Biden in the 2024 election would be an insurmountable setback for the climate. To NPR, he noted that during Trump’s first term, mayors and governors adhered to clean-energy goals. “No one prime minister, one king, one president anywhere in the world is able to stop what the marketplace of the world is now moving towards,” Kerry told NPR.

The AP said, “Kerry said he assures leaders of other countries that even if a candidate like Trump, who is running for re-election, were to win, ‘no one person can reverse what the world is doing now.’” If the Trump campaign is clever, it might consider using this clip in messages targeted at climate-concerned voters. It could help neutralize the issue.

Anyway, there’s an additional point here that goes beyond the politics of it or even how the power of markets can outweigh that of governments. Humans have a tendency to want to be what they’re not. The rich businessmen like Howard Schultz, Michael Bloomberg, and Tom Steyer want to become politicians. The politicians want to quit and go into business. Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see whether Kerry starts his own fund or joins up with some large outfit, and, either way, how the financial returns and social returns stack up when and if they become available. One positive sign about his risk-analysis ability, notwithstanding his claim that it’s all Trump-proof, is that he’s leaving to go do this now rather than after the November election.

Jared Kushner at ADL: Jared Kushner gave the keynote address at the Anti-Defamation League’s big convention. It was about antisemitism, but it contains some more widely applicable general advice: