Russia, China join US in climate cooperation, despite other divisions
WASHINGTON — The leaders of Russia and China put aside disputes with U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday long enough to pledge international cooperation on cutting climate-wrecking coal and petroleum emissions in a livestreamed summit showcasing America’s return to the fight against global warming.
Neither Vladimir Putin nor Xi Jinping immediately followed the United States and some of its developed allies in making specific new pledges to reduce damaging fossil fuel pollution on the first day of the two-day U.S.-hosted summit. But climate advocates hoped the high-profile — if glitch-ridden — virtual gathering would kick-start
new action by major polluters, paving the way for a November U.N. meeting in Glasgow critical to drastically slowing climate change over the next decade.
The entire world faces “a moment of peril,” but also “a moment of opportunity,” Biden declared from the TV-style chrome-blue set for the virtual summit of 40 world leaders. Participants appeared one after the other on screen for what appeared to be a mix of live and recorded addresses.
“The signs are unmistakable,” Biden said. “The science is undeniable. The cost of inaction keeps mounting.”
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham was the only U.S. governor to take part in the Earth Day climate summit, though several mayors also participated.
The Democratic governor, speaking remotely from New Mexico, touted the state’s efforts to curb methane gas emissions, while still collaborating with oil industry officials.
While Lujan Grisham has drawn praise from environmental groups for her administration’s actions, she has also been criticized by some youthful climate change activists for voicing concern about the state-level impact of a recent federal pause
on oil and gas drilling leases on public lands.
Biden’s new U.S. commitment, timed to the summit, would cut America’s fossil fuel emissions as much as 52% by 2030. It comes after four years of international withdrawal from the issue under President Donald Trump, who mocked the science of climate change and pulled the U.S. out of the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord.
Biden’s administration this week is sketching out a vision of
a prosperous, clean-energy U.S. where factories produce cuttingedge batteries and electric cars for export, line workers re-lay an efficient national electrical grid, and crews cap abandoned oil and gas rigs, and coal mines.
But Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell dismissed the administration’s plans. “This is quite the one-two punch,” McConnell said in a Senate speech Thursday. “Toothless requests of our foreign adversaries … and maximum pain for American citizens.”
At the summit, Japan announced its new 46% emissions reduction target and South Korea said it would stop public financing of new coal-fired power plants, potentially an important step in persuading China and other coalreliant nations also to curb the building and funding of new ones.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, one of the leaders shown watching summit proceedings in the multibox conference screen, said his nation would up its fossil fuel pollution cuts from 30% to at least 40%.
Travel precautions compelled the summit to play out on a livestream, limiting opportunities for spontaneous interaction and negotiation. Its opening hours were sometimes marked by electronic echoes, random beeps and off-screen voices.
But the summit also marshaled an impressive display of the world’s most powerful leaders speaking on the single issue of climate change.
China’s Xi, whose country is the world’s biggest emissions culprit, followed by the U.S., spoke first among the other global figures. He made no reference to disputes over territorial claims, trade and other matters that made it uncertain until Wednesday that he would even take part in the
U.S. summit. And he said China would work with America in cutting emissions.
“To protect the environment is to protect productivity, and to boost the environment is to boost productivity. It’s as simple as that,” Xi said.
Putin and his government have been irate over Biden’s characterization of him as a “killer” for Russia’s aggressive moves against opponents, and he is under pressure this week over the declining health of jailed opposition figure Alexei Navalny. But he made no mention of those disputes in his climate remarks.
“Russia is genuinely interested in galvanizing international cooperation so as to look further for effective solutions to climate change, as well as to all other vital challenges,” Putin said. Russia by some measures is the world’s fourth-biggest emitter of fossil fuel fumes.
Climate efforts in recent years have proved a forum where even rival world leaders want to be seen as putting aside disputes to serve as international statesmen and women, even though the cumulative output of fossil fuel emissions is still hurtling the Earth toward disastrous temperature rises.