Ralph Alswang

Part of a series profiling key players in environmental politics. Read more>>

Who he is: Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat

Green cred: What is it about defeated Democratic presidential candidates and climate change? First Al Gore and now John Kerry have taken up the mantle of Earth's defender (although both were interested in the issue before running for president, too -- Gore even wrote a book on ecology as a U.S. senator). But unlike Gore, who produced a blockbuster documentary and picked up a Nobel Prize after leaving office, Kerry is taking a behind-the-scenes approach. He has become the Senate's point person on the climate and energy bill unveiled last week. Since last fall, he has directed backroom negotiations between Democrats and a few Republicans on proposals to limit greenhouse gas emissions.   

How he rolls: Kerry held a dinner party at his upscale Georgetown home in March, bringing together top administration officials to kick start development of the climate bill. In attendance were EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, White House climate czar Carol Browner and other top brass. The idea -- to forgo the institutional corridors of Capitol Hill for something more elegant and perhaps more productive -- was vintage Kerry. Senators with humbler digs couldn't have done it.

Why he's in charge: Environmental issues are the usual domain of Senator Barbara Boxer, chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. But that committee is unabashedly partisan. Late last year, after Republicans boycotted a key committee meeting on the climate bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid deputized Kerry to honcho the negotiations, hoping he would bring a softer touch and entice at least one Republican to the table. It worked at first with South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, who partnered with Kerry on developing the legislation, until Graham said that Reid's own decisions about Senate business caused him to leave the table.

His big tent strategy: In crafting new legislation, Kerry has solicited input from business groups such as the American Petroleum Institute and the National Association of Manufacturers, representatives of some of the most fossil fuel intensive industries. That big-tent approach has angered some environmentalists but also earned him more credibility with business-friendly Republicans, who -- while they may not sign on to the bill -- have at least said positive things about the approach Kerry took, setting a different tone than beset the recent health care debate, for instance.

Warming up to Teresa: It might be a stretch to say that global warming brought Kerry together with his second wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, but it didn't hurt. The two first met at an Earth Day rally in 1990. Two years later, after her first husband, Senator John Heinz, was killed in an airplane crash, the two met again at the 1992 U.N. environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro. They were married in 1995. Heinz Kerry is a noted environmental advocate in her own right, directing a portion of the Heinz family fortune (think ketchup) to support environmental causes.