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This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

John Podesta already has a lot on his plate. The veteran political strategist has been working for the past year as a senior adviser to President Joe Biden overseeing the rollout of the Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest climate law in United States history. Now, in the wake of another landmark climate agreement at COP28, he’s also going to take over the job of representing the US on the world stage.

Following the news that special climate envoy John Kerry would depart the role this spring, President Joe Biden announced that Podesta would take over the position, putting the latter in charge of the administration’s climate policy abroad as well as at home.

Podesta arrives in this new role at a time when the United States is facing increasingly urgent calls to step up the amount of climate funding it sends to developing countries. As he represents the US in international climate talks, he has a responsibility to follow up Biden’s domestic policy achievements with equal ambition on international issues, said Rachel Cleetus, a policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“Despite important progress secured through the Inflation Reduction Act and other domestic policies, the country has repeatedly fallen short, especially on delivering climate finance for low- and middle-income countries to tackle climate change,” she said. She added that Podesta “will need to ensure international climate diplomacy is as much a priority as the domestic climate agenda.”

Podesta has decades of experience in Beltway politics and has influenced the shape of climate policy under three Democratic presidents. As White House chief of staff to Bill Clinton, he helped Clinton hone his messaging on climate and environmental issues, and he later served as a top adviser to Barack Obama, who tried and failed to sell Congress on a cap-and-trade climate bill. When that bill died in the Senate, Podesta pushed Obama’s focus toward the executive branch, crafting a key regulation of power emissions.

After Congress passed the Inflation........

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