WASHINGTON — The United Nations climate summit in Dubai was wrapping up last month when John Kerry went to a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua only to find a surprise waiting for him. Xie’s 8-year-old grandson had brought Kerry a card for his 80th birthday.
The lanky American, who had signed the landmark Paris climate accord with his granddaughter on his knee almost a decade earlier, bent down to thank the boy and praise his grandfather, according to someone who described the private encounter on the condition of anonymity.
Just how overheated a planet those two grandchildren half a world apart will inherit has hinged in part on the unusually warm bond between Kerry and Xie, whose relationship for the past decade and a half helped forge the globe’s stutter-step progress in curbing climate change. Xie, 74, retired in December, and Kerry recently announced that he’s stepping down soon.
It was a partnership that defined one generation’s hopes of saving a future one.
At a glance, the two men make an odd pairing. Xie is balding and bespectacled, with a face as round as Kerry’s is narrow and angular. Xie got his start in the Chinese countryside during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution before climbing the ranks of the Communist Party in environmental and economic agencies. Kerry is a son of New England privilege and boarding schools who fought in the Vietnam War and later protested against it. He became a politician and a diplomat, marrying into fabulous wealth along the way.
But over the years, Kerry and Xie forged a remarkable level of trust and respect in the world of international climate negotiations. They checked in on each other when they were sick, met each other’s families and spent long hours debating, quarreling and compromising in the fight against global warming.
The result was a series of agreements despite rising tensions between the U.S. and China that have even raised fears of war. Kerry and Xie paved the way for progress at…
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