The Foreign Service Journal, November 2021

18 NOVEMBER 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL MESSAGE FROM THE HILL The Climate Change Challenge BY SENATOR SHE LDON WH I TEHOUSE F or nearly a decade, I have co- led the U.S. Senate delegation to the annual Munich Security Conference, first with the late Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and now with Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). Each year, I have elevated two closely linked issues that will shape our foreign policy for generations: climate change and international corruption. Both demand urgent action. It will take time and persistence to rebuild American credibility on these issues, but a pair of important interna- tional meetings could jump-start that process. The first is the United Nations’ 26th Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP) this month in Glasgow; the second is President Joe Biden’s Summit for Democracy, which will bring together international partners to address global corruption. Success at both will set a promising course for U.S. foreign policy in the decades ahead, and both will rely heavily on the skill and experience of our Foreign Service. Our hopes rest with you. Our Last Chance on Climate America enters Glasgow with depleted credibility on climate change. We are emerging from four years under Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a lawyer and politician, has served since 2007 in the U.S. Senate. He serves on the Budget Committee, the Environment and Public Works Committee, the Judiciary Committee, the Finance Committee and the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Both his father, Charles S. Whitehouse, and grandfather, Edwin Sheldon Whitehouse, were career members of the U.S. Foreign Service and ambassadors; the former was president of AFSA from 1981 to 1982. Growing up in a Foreign Service family, Sheldon Whitehouse lived in Vietnam, Cambodia, South Africa, Congo, Guinea, Laos and Thailand. an American president who spouted cli- mate denial, populated his administra- tion with polluter lobbyists and lawyers, and advanced the fossil fuel industry’s corrupting work against climate protec- tions. Trump pulled the United States out of the global climate accord that we, ourselves, helped negotiate. Worst of all, he cost us four years as climate destruc- tion accelerated around the globe. Blame doesn’t fall solely on Trump, however. A Democratic president with a Democratic Party–controlled Senate refused to push forward the compre- hensive climate bill passed through the House by Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2009. The Supreme Court’s decisions loosed an avalanche of political money into our politics that cost the U.S. more than a decade of climate progress. America’s fos- sil fuel industry deployed a massive dark- money apparatus to control our politics and stymie significant climate action. Glasgow is our last chance to lead the world in the race against climate catastrophe. The U.N.’s latest Intergov- ernmental Panel on Climate Change report—the gold-standard climate assessment—warns of as much as 4 degrees Celsius of warming from pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. We must act swiftly or risk runaway sea level rise, searing heat waves, cataclysmic storms and other calamities, with grave consequences to national security and world order. The U.S. will come to this COP as substantial climate legislation is in the works. If the budget bill remains an ambitious one—in keeping with the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold for safety set by scientists—the United States will be credible to lead again, to achieve an effective international climate accord. In the hands of Special Envoy John Kerry and the State Department’s climate team, a meaningful, enduring agreement will be within reach. The last century was the American Century because of American leader- ship, and humanity is safer and more prosperous as a result. The fossil fuel industry’s malign manipulation of our democratic process is an aberration. The world needs America, and I am confident that you, the members of the Foreign Service, can guide us back to our traditional position of leadership.