Kerry Promises Climate Change Will Be Senate Priority

November 26, 2008 8:00 a.m. EST

Washington, DC (AHN) - John Kerry (D-MA), the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he will make combating climate change a top priority.

"It's a moment we've been waiting for, many of us, for some period of time - for eight years, to be blunt. And we intend to pick up the baton and really run with it," Kerry said in a conference call with reporters on Tuesday.

He said a new Democratic presidential administration and a Congress with a large Democratic majority, would facilitate U.S. climate change policy.

"I think President-elect [Barack] Obama, in his remarks to the climate summit that Governor Schwarzenegger held last week, made it very, very clear that after eight years of obstruction and delay and denial, the United States is going to rejoin the world community in tackling the global climate challenge," Kerry said.

The Massachusetts senator did say that the current economic crisis poses challenges to meaningful worldwide climate change policy. He said offering countries like China and India incentives to commit to lowering carbon emissions will be difficult.

"The bottom line is we are not going to be in the position we were two years ago in the short term to do as much technology transfer or economic assistance in terms of transitional issues that might have led other countries to participate," Kerry said.