Despite an executive order from President Joe Biden, the State Department did not track the jet emissions spewed by climate envoy John Kerry’s trips to two international environmental confabs blamed for making the environment worse.
In a scolding audit, the Government Accountability Office said on Thursday that the State Department didn’t comply with Biden’s orders meant to curb greenhouse gas emissions by federal officials when it did not calculate the emissions from travel to two U.N. climate change conferences by Kerry, the special presidential envoy for climate, and hundreds of aides.
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A British report said most of the emissions from the 2021 event came from air travel.
“According to the United Kingdom government's report, greenhouse gas emissions from aviation travel to COP26 were significant in comparison to estimated total emissions from the event. According to this report, approximately 72% of the greenhouse gas calculated residual emissions from the event came from international aviation,” the GAO audit said.
The State Department’s excuse: It wasn’t ready to track emissions in time for the summits.
The GAO revealed that 191 Biden administration officials attended the 2021 conference in Glasgow, Scotland, and 259 attended the 2022 event in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
Kerry flew commercial to the 2022 summit after his private jet trips were criticized for polluting.
The GAO said the State Department estimated that flying just 66 State Department officials to the Egypt conference created 85 metric tons of emissions. For comparison, a Fox News Digital report said Kerry’s trips in a private family jet emitted more than 300 metric tons of carbon since he took office. Fox said, “The average American has a total carbon footprint of about 16 tons per year, according to the Nature Conservancy.”
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Biden signed the executive order in December 2021 with the goal of zero emissions by the federal government by 2050.
The agency explained, “These goals include greenhouse gas emissions reductions from aviation travel. For State and other federal agencies, the first step in meeting these goals is understanding U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from air travel and other sources, including U.S. delegation air travel to meetings of the United Nations Conference of the Parties.”