Kerry challenges oil industry to prove its promised tech rescue for climate-wrecking emissions

WASHINGTON (AP) — Oil and gas producers talk up technological breakthroughs they say will soon allow the world to drill and burn fossil fuels without worsening global warming. U.S. climate envoy John Kerry says the time is here for the industry to prove it can make the technology happen — at scale, affordably and quickly — to stave off climate disaster.

And Kerry says he has “serious questions” whether it can.

Kerry's comments came in an interview with The Associated Press on one of the most crucial topics in the fight to slow global warming: the argument from oil and gas producers that they will soon have technology in place to extract the climate-damaging gases that make fossil fuels the main culprit in climate change, allowing companies to keep pumping crude and natural gas worry-free.

Kerry said the ideal solution is a fast global switch to renewable energy, but oil and gas states and companies have a right to give their claim of technological rescue a try.