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The Biden administration’s “climate envoy,” John Kerry, claimed that the United States was “on the brink of needing to declare a climate emergency.”

During a forum hosted by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics last week, when asked what people who care about the climate and are concerned about the future “should be doing,” Kerry stated that people needed to “start focusing” on the arguments that went with President-elect Donald Trump’s transition. Kerry added that there were “seven million people” who were dying each year due to poor air quality.

Kerry added that the U.S. needed to “get back to caring” about what was going on in “other parts of the world.”

“I think personally we’re on the brink of needing to declare a climate emergency, which is what we really have,” Kerry said. “And, we need to get people to behave as if this really is a major transitional challenge to the whole planet, everybody.”

Kerry stated that “people in Africa” who don’t have electricity “need to chose the right kinds of electricity,” adding that the U.S. “needs to help them be able to afford it.”

“We have the largest economy in the world — $24 trillion or $23 trillion economy, maybe more by now,” Kerry added. “The next closest is China at about $18 trillion. And, the next closest to the two of us — Germany and Japan at $4 trillion. That’s how far it drops down. You don’t think we have some sort of obligation out of that to be responsible? I think we do.”

In January, Kerry was reported to be stepping down from his role as the U.S. climate envoy to work on President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.

The White House selected John Podesta to serve as the U.S. climate envoy to replace Kerry.