Wednesday, Oct. 15, the College of William and Mary hosted a Fireside Chat with former Secretary of State John F. Kerry as the inaugural event for the Blue Horizons Visiting Fellows Program, moderated by Dean of William & Mary School of Marine Science and Director of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science Derek Aday.
This past January, the College announced 2025 as the Year of the Environment, promoting involvement in the environment and sustainability program and environmental action in the broader community. This event marks another step in the College’s effort to deepen its commitment to safeguarding the climate.
College President Katherine Rowe provided opening remarks regarding the importance of hosting Blue Horizons and opened the event with a brief introduction to Kerry.
“Welcome to the launch of the Blue Horizons Fellow series,” Rowe said. “You are the ones who will get to say you were here when this began, and it is going to be a powerful series. It is going to last for decades. Looking back, we have prepared our graduates to lead in addressing the greatest challenges of their time over more than three centuries. Among the defining challenges of the 21st century, I will propose to you that ensuring the health and stability, prosperity of the world’s coastlines is going to be among the most important.”
Rowe listed Kerry’s accolades from his time serving as Secretary of State under former United States President Barack Obama. During Obama’s administration, Kerry pushed for environmental policy and continued his advocacy under former President Joe Biden as the nation’s first presidential envoy for climate change.
“From 2013 to 2017, Secretary Kerry guided the strategy of nuclear nonproliferation,” Rowe said. “He combatted extremism, and he helped think through the impact of environmental change and the strategies of resilience that we would need in negotiating it. He successfully led and negotiated through the Paris climate agreement.”
Aday began the fireside chat with some prepared questions.
“You were recently in Busan, South Korea, at the Our Ocean Conference, and you said, ‘There’s no separating the challenge of the oceans or the solutions to the climate crisis. They’re one and the same, equally existential, and that’s why this work is so important to me,’” Aday said. “It seems like we’re faced every day with new, potentially existential challenges. Tell us a little bit about why you’re leaning into ocean issues and what you think the most pressing issues are for us to work on?”
Kerry began with a brief history of how international policy has been dealing with the climate crisis. He was a driving force in the international correspondence that led to the final drafting of the Paris Agreement in 2015, and personally signed the agreement in 2016 at the United Nations General Assembly Hall.
President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement in 2017, and since then Kerry has been advocating for climate activism and working to reestablish the United States’ leadership surrounding the climate crisis.
“So where are we?” Kerry said. “Barely a nation, let alone a corporation, that signed up to do things is doing what they said they were going to do. And so why am I here, with respect to oceans? For this simple reality: you cannot solve the problem of the climate crisis without respecting all of the laws of physics with respect to the ocean and biology and chemistry, and you cannot solve the problem of the ocean without dealing with emissions and the warming of the planet.”
Kerry continued with a lighthearted anecdote.
“Just to make sure I was going to come here this afternoon and talk to you on an even footing, I went to ChatGPT in the car. And I said to ChatGPT, ‘Is climate change a hoax?’ And I want to announce to all of you here in Virginia, it came back resoundingly. Not only is it not a hoax, it’s a major scientific challenge and affirmed by 97% of all the scientists in the world. So I hope you feel better, it’s not a hoax,” Kerry said.
Aday then segued into his next question, asking Kerry to tell the audience what he wishes they could understand about the realities of climate change.
“As you have done this thing, as you’ve done the traveling and you’ve really become deeply knowledgeable about these issues, it occurs to me that at some point you must have said to yourself, ‘If people only knew.’ And so my question is, finish that sentence.”
Kerry concisely and immediately answered that most people do not know the truth behind the climate crisis.
“If people only knew the truth,” he said. “It’s that simple, folks. What is the problem of climate crisis? It is that we human beings continue to burn fossil fuel without capturing the emissions. That’s the whole problem.”
Aday presented his final question to Kerry about his hopes for the future of climate policy.
“Tell us, what gives you hope? You’re clearly passionate and enthusiastic about this. What brings that passion and enthusiasm for a better tomorrow?”
“If you really take the data, look at the data, think about it, we are so privileged in the United States. We are so spoiled in so many ways that we can go out and say what we want and not be imprisoned for it, and make change happen,” Kerry said. “And what’s happening now on the streets with ICE, it’s an aberration, it’s not America. But we’ve made progress, and I think technologically we’re now on the eve of a vast new set of possibilities for all countries, for everybody to share, for people to come together more effectively.”
While Kerry acknowledged the current state of the nation may imply otherwise, with mass deportations across the country, he hopes that overall, Americans recognize they are fairly privileged and will inspire potential change in climate policy in the coming years.
“This is a big moment for all of you, no matter what stage of life you’re in, to fight for those values around which we’ve organized our lives and which permit me to say, in 2025, that really, we’ve made progress. And there is not one single challenge, with the exception of a volcano or an asteroid or an earthquake, that we look at that is not, as President Kennedy told us, ‘human-created.’ And if it’s human-created, it’s human changeable,” he said.
Kerry holds a belief that Americans will fight for change to help address the climate crisis and uncover new ways to address it.
“So I believe in that,” Kerry said. “I believe in the incredible entrepreneurial capacity of human beings, in the creativity of human beings, in the goodness of human beings. Let’s go fight.”
To close the event, Rowe presented Kerry with an honorary award to recognize his role as the inaugural fellow for the Blue Horizons, ceremonially marking the commencement of the initiative.
