Kerry rallies global climate push as uncertainty grows in US

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — John Kerry is everywhere and on the move at a fateful U.N. climate summit.

President Joe Biden’s envoy at the talks in Glasgow, Kerry steams from side talks with U.S. rivals China and Russia that painstakingly probe for common ground on climate to news conferences extolling progress. Kerry pops into project launches, rewarding CEOs and bankers for emissions-cutting efforts with high-level face time and praise. The lanky envoy smiles for a photo with Indigenous women from Brazil, their feather headdresses barely reaching his chin.

Toward the end of the U.N. climate summit's first of two weeks, Kerry’s voice grew hoarse from his mission of rallying global climate efforts that are threatening to hit a wall at home.

“The alternative is you don’t do anything, you don’t say anything" on climate, Kerry told reporters at the summit. “You don’t have any promises, you don’t have any commitments. And you’re sitting there, waiting for the deluge.”

He was speaking of a climate fight growing more urgent, as global warming from the burning of fossil fuel intensifies, and more fraught, as the United States' own wildly swinging seesaw politics imperil Biden's climate efforts and again threaten global momentum on the matter.

With the summit underway, the U.S. House on Friday finally passed a stalled infrastructure bill that contains some important measures to cut U.S. emissions.

But Biden’s lagging political support, and Republican upsets in off-year elections last week, are heightening uncertainty that the U.S. administration can deliver on some of Biden's biggest climate promises.

Kerry, President Barack Obama's secretary of state and a former senator, came back post-President Donald Trump to serve as Biden's climate envoy.

The job has entailed apologizing...