China goes from laggard to leader
World’s biggest polluter seen as a driving force for deal at two-week Paris conference
BEIJING— Back in 2009, China was a reluctant partner during major climate negotiations in Copenhagen that eventually collapsed amid recriminations between rich and poor nations. This time around, the world’s biggest polluter is regarded as a driving force behind what could be a comprehensive deal at a world climate summit in Paris.
The change in stance has a lot to do with the record levels of foul air that often hang over China’s major industrialized urban centres, undermining public health. The resulting backlash over the smog has made President Xi Jinping’s government far more serious about combating climate change and investing in cleaner forms of energy.
China’s resolve will be tested along with other countries as world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama and China’s Xi, gather in the French capital. The talks organized by the United Nations are scheduled to run for two weeks and include the biggest ever gathering of leaders on a single day.
“Nowhere has our coordination been more necessary or more fruitful” than on climate, Obama told reporters as he met Xi Monday morning in Paris. “As the two largest economies in the world and the two largest carbon emitters, we have both determined it is our responsibility to take action.”
The road to Paris, for China and other countries, has been in the works for some time.
In March 2014, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang declared war on pollution, telling the National People’s Congress that his government would accelerate efforts to tackle environmental problems.
At the same time, China has embarked on a makeover designed to shift its $10-trillion-plus economy away from reliance on big, energyconsuming heavy industries and toward services and consumer spending. For climate deal warriors, both moves have added up to a big and welcome policy shift.
The nascent alliance between the world’s two biggest polluters stands in stark contrast to Copenhagen in 2009 where China’s premier at the time, Wen Jiabao, missed a scheduled meeting with Barack Obama, and the U.S. president later forced himself into a meeting of the Chinese with Brazil, South Africa and India in order to meet face to face with the leaders he felt necessary to forge a lasting deal.
Ultimately, the Copenhagen deal broke down because of opposition from a host of smaller countries, including Sudan, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Tuvalu.
Since then, “the United States has invested enormously in a better dialogue with China and the other major economies,” former UN climate chief Yvo de Boer, who now heads the Global Green Growth Institute, said in an Oct. 29 telephone interview from Seoul.
China’s engagement this time around has been one of the biggest game changers in the climate story, and received a boost when Obama and Xi announced an accord in November 2014 committing to work together to combat the greenhouse gases that result from burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal. As part of the deal, China set a deadline of 2030 for emissions to stop rising.