Video of the White House “climate czar” defending traveling by private jet to receive a “climate leadership” award in Iceland resurfaced and sparked criticism this week.
The video: In 2019, former Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Reykjavik, Iceland, to accept the Arctic Circle Prize for bringing the U.S. into the Paris Climate Agreement.
- Johann Bjarni Kolbeinsson, an Icelandic reporter, asked Kerry at the event, “I understand that you came here with a private jet. Is that an environmental way to travel?”
- “It’s the only choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle,” Kerry replied.
- “And, I believe, the time it takes me to get somewhere, I can’t sail across the ocean,” he added. “I have to fly to meet with people and get things done. But what I’m doing, almost full time, is working to win the battle of climate change, and in the end, if I offset and contribute my life to do this, I’m not going to be put on the defensive.”
Under fire: Kolbeinsson’s question echoed criticism at the time from the Arctic Circle Round Table chairman, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, according to Icelandic outlet RUV.
- Kerry’s answer did not address the fact that private jets release up to 40 times the carbon per passenger of commercial airplanes.
- Conservative critics such as Sen. Tom Cotton and National Review editor Byron York accused Kerry of exhibiting “hypocrisy” regarding the environmental issue.
Carbon King: Kerry, a blue-blooded former Democratic presidential candidate from Massachusetts, sits on the National Security Council as the “Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.”
- The well-to-do former senator’s plane, a Gulfstream Aerospace, has invited renewed scrutiny following Kerry’s controversial remarks about job losses in the oil and gas industries.
- “What President Biden wants to do is make sure those folks have better choices,” Kerry said at a January 27 press conference, suggesting unemployed workers could work building solar panels instead.
