John Kerry,  special presidential envoy on climate at the State Department,  has disclosed millions of dollars in income from stocks—including from oil companies—that he liquidated after he assumed office in January, according to financial disclosure forms obtained by media outlets. By Tom Ozimek, EPOCH TIMES.

Kerry and Biden 2020

According to Kerry’s filings, a periodic transaction report (pdf) and a public financial disclosure report (pdf), his total investments were valued between $4.2 million and $15 million. Kerry divested from the stocks in March, about a month and a half after taking over the position of special climate envoy, the forms show.

Under federal ethics laws, most political appointees are required to publicly disclose their current and past financial ties for reasons of transparency and public confidence that their policy decisions are free of conflict of interest. The State Department told Axios, which first reported on the disclosures, that the department’s Ethics Office reviewed Kerry’s assets and investments to identify ones with a significant conflict-of-interest risk, and that “Special Presidential Envoy Kerry agreed to divest the assets identified by the Ethics Office and has done so.”

Kerry also signed a pledge stating he would not take part in decisions involving his former clients and employers, Axios reported. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate of the Biden administration John Kerry said that those workers impacted by the administration’s fossil fuel policy can find jobs in solar panels or other growing industries.

Kerry, who once served as secretary of state for the Obama administration said in a White House briefing that President Joe Biden is doing what is necessary to combat climate change to eradicate the oil and gas and coal industries. And the fossil fuel workers have been “fed a false narrative” that “dealing with the climate is coming at their expense.”

“We didn’t come here to put anybody on notice except to the seriousness of President Biden’s intent to do what needs to be done to deal with this crisis,” said Kerry. “And it is a crisis, with respect to those workers, no two people are more, in this room, are more concerned about it.”

John Kerry told an audience back in 2015 that a layer of carbon dioxide about a half an inch thick surrounded the earths upper atmosphere.

Some lawmakers disagree with the argument that there is a climate crisis. “Sure the climate is changing, and one of the reasons is because the climate has always been changing,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said in 2016 during a debate. “There has never been a time when the climate was not changing.” In October 2018, Rubio said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that “many scientists would debate the percentage of what is attributable to man versus normal fluctuations.”