Later this month, John Kerry, U.S. President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, plans to visit China for yet another diplomatic arm-wrestling bout with his counterpart, Xie Zhenhua. Kerry will be bringing a message that Xie and anti-American nationalists in Beijing won’t like.

China is the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, and given the dire new United Nations report on quickening climate change, Beijing’s pledge to wait until 2030 to start seriously cutting emissions isn’t nearly enough, Kerry plans to say. In a major speech in London last month, he said that “if China sticks with its current plan and does not peak its emissions until 2030, then the entire rest of the world would have to go to [net] zero—zero!—by 2040 or even 2035” to have any hope of avoiding climate catastrophe. That’s obviously not possible.

In an interview with Foreign Policy, Kerry confirmed he plans to push Beijing harder, especially in reducing its coal plant exports worldwide. “What I hope to do is get a stronger pathway than the one we’re currently on with China, so—in effect—it sends a message: It does require a stronger commitment on coal,” he said. “China could stop funding external coal plants around the world in favor of funding renewable plants. … And China could clearly peak sooner than 2030.”

“China could stop funding external coal plants around the world in favor of funding renewable plants. … And China could clearly peak sooner than 2030.”

For Kerry, the new challenge to China is part of a vast portfolio the former secretary of state is pursuing ahead of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, in November, where “we can, in a little more than a hundred days, save the next hundred years,” Kerry said in July. Seeking to restore U.S. credibility on climate that was all but destroyed by Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, Kerry is simultaneously grappling with sometimes tepid support on Capitol Hill for the president’s costly carbon-reduction measures, threats from Europe over a possible carbon trade war, and defiance not just from China but much of the fossil fuel-consuming developing world as well.

As if that were not enough pressure, Kerry is also taking fresh flak from conservatives over his wealthy family’s “carbon-spewing private jet,” as David Harsanyi put it in a National Review article titled, “​​The Insufferable Hypocrisy of John Kerry.”

In the interview with FP, Kerry denied he uses the jet at all. “It’s just not true,” he said. “I don’t fly on the family jet. I fly commercially.” Kerry added that he and his family are trying to set a green example. “I drive an electric car. I use a solar field to power my house,” he said.

A much bigger issue is whether Biden, and Kerry, have the leverage they need to reestablish U.S. credibility abroad. Republicans and some Democrats want to put post-COVID-19 economic recovery first and climate second. That means backing Biden’s Trump-like “Buy America” plan even if, for example, China is building better green energy technology—as it often is. (Kerry himself has pointed out China is the largest producer of solar panels and alternative renewable energy in the world.) On one amendment this week, the Senate voted 90-9 to bar “renewable energy projects receiving federal funds and subsidies from purchasing materials, technology, and critical minerals produced in China.”

Even Biden favors building up green capacity at home rather than purchasing it abroad, though that will take much longer. And his own administration sometimes seems conflicted over its priorities. In a statement Wednesday, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan urged oil-producing nations to crank out more carbon-yielding petroleum to battle rising gas prices. Referring to a production increase agreed to by OPEC, Sullivan said “at a critical moment in the global recovery, this is simply not enough.”

Kerry said he didn’t think Sullivan’s statement would hurt U.S. credibility on climate. “I think Jake was talking about very short-term economic stability and not about the long term,” he said.