In a short meeting with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Monday, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry restated his commitment to cooperate with Japan in expanding renewable energy and offering multilateral support in the fight against climate change within the Indo-Pacific region.

Last Friday, the U.S. Department of State had announced Kerry¡¯s plan to visit Japan to attend the Group of Seven ministerial meeting on climate and the environment held during the weekend in Sapporo. After the summit ¡ª at which G7 leaders agreed to boost wind power usage, but failed to set a timeline to abandon coal ¡ª Kerry traveled to Tokyo to meet with Kishida.

Their talks centered on Kishida¡¯s push for a green transformation, which refers to a set of investments to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 and reduce Japan¡¯s dependence on imported fossil fuels, and the efforts being made by the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden to tackle climate change, formulated in the passed last August.

In interviews with Japanese media outlets, Kerry expressed his satisfaction over how, for the first time, the joint communique released after the summit explicitly mentioned the need to ¡°end the construction of new unabated coal-fired power generation,¡± adding that, for measures to fight climate change, the next six to eight years will be decisive.

¡°This is the biggest economic transformation in our history since the time of the Industrial Revolution. And nobody should be scared of it,¡±.

Kerry and Kishida have known each other for quite some time and have worked closely together as top diplomats in their respective countries for almost four years.

Kishida mentioned in an interview from years ago that, including conversations on the phone, the two had met over 40 times. Their negotiations helped lay the groundwork for former U.S. President Barack Obama¡¯s visit to Hiroshima in May 2016 ¡ª the first time a sitting U.S. president visited the site of the first atomic bombing.

In April of that same year, Kerry, guided by Kishida, became the first U.S. Secretary of State to visit Hiroshima.

When word reached him of the attempted attack on Kishida in Wakayama on Saturday, Kerry said he had not heard the details but was deeply concerned about the incident.

He added: ¡°He¡¯s a personal friend and someone we admire very, very much.¡±