US Climate Envoy John Kerry has given humanity nine years to prevent a "climate crisis" — echoing decades of similar dire warnings.
Kerry issued the clichéd ultimatum in a TV interview on Friday, hours after the US formally re-joined the Paris Climate Accord less than four months after the former Trump administration finally abandoned it.
"The scientists told us three years ago we had 12 years to avert the worst consequences of climate crisis," Kerry told CBS News. "We are now three years gone, so we have nine years left."
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) February 19, 2021
"Even if we did everything that we said we were going to do when we signed up in Paris we would see a rise in the Earth's temperature to somewhere around 3.7 degrees or more, which is catastrophic," Kerry predicted. "There is no room for B.S. anymore. There's no faking it on this one."
On his first day in office a month earlier, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to return to the Paris pact negotiated when he was vice-president to Barack Obama — with Kerry serving as Secretary of State.
Amid freezing weather that has caused chaos across the country, CBS host Ben Tracy was anxious that viewers should not get "hung up on the term global warming and say 'I thought everything was supposed to get warmer'," adding "I heard one scientist say this is really 'global weirding'!"
"It is directly related to the warming, even though your instinct is to say: 'wait a minute, this is the new Ice Age'," Kerry insisted. "But it's not. It's coming from the global warming."
London School of Economics economist Sir Nicholas Stern gave world leaders 10 to 15 years to save the planet in his 2006 report, while former US senator and failed 2000 presidential candidate Al Gore echoed that deadline the same year.