If President Obama is re-elected, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) will most likely become the next secretary of state, breaking millions of hearts who wait for texts from Hillary.

But Kerry is probably the strongest advocate for climate action in the Senate. Grist spoke to Kerry about Obama’s energy strategy, how things can change, and Romney’s clean energy record in Massachusetts.

Here's an excerpt from the fascinating interview. It gets weird around the "all-of-the-above" strategy question:

Q. The climate issue is barely registering in this election. Why has this issue fallen off the Democratic agenda?

A. For several reasons. No. 1, because huge amounts of money were spent to purposely discredit the facts. Some of the coal industry, some of your old power-plant owners, put money into branding cap-and-trade as cap-and-tax. The British university emails were exploited by the opponents very effectively, and a kind of pejorative set in about climate science as a result. I think the climate issue lost 20 or 30 points of support in the public arena.

So once the House of Representatives passed cap-and-trade, this onslaught of negative activity took place which had an impact. The people who claimed it was a hoax, nothing more than a liberal conspiracy to have a government takeover, spent a lot of money scaring our colleagues. And that’s what happened, they scared them. They created a certain credibility [problem] that was never answered. There was no counter.

Q. To enviros, Obama’s all-of-the-above energy strategy seems like a cop-out. Should the party be moving more aggressively away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy?

A. You have to be all of the above. Look, I’m the most ardent advocate up here for doing something about climate change, but you’re nevertheless gonna have to use fossil fuels. The question is, can you use them in clean and manageable ways? The answer is, Yes, you can, if you make the right sort of requirements.

Read the rest HERE.

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