China warns US not to defy climate drive
CHINA has warned Donald Trump that he will be defying the wishes of the entire planet if he acts on his vow to back away from the Paris climate agreement after he becomes US president in January.
In a sign of how far the world has shifted in recognising the need to tackle global warming, Beijing — once seen as an obstructive force in UN climate talks — is now leading the push for progress by responding to fears that Trump would pull the US out of the landmark accord.
“It is global society’s will that all want to co-operate to combat climate change,” a senior Beijing negotiator said in Marrakesh on Friday, at the first round of UN talks since the Paris deal was sealed last December. The Chinese negotiators added that “any movement by the new US government” would not affect their transition towards becoming a greener economy.
India joined in the warnings, saying Trump’s election would force countries to reassess an accord hailed as an end to the fossil-fuel era. “Everyone will rethink how this whole process is going to unfold,” said Ravi Prasad, India’s chief negotiator.
Trump’s sweeping victory has shaken what had seemed an unstoppable bout of global action to tackle climate change. Governments struck the first climate deal for aviation in October, days before agreeing to phase out hydrofluorocarbon chemicals.
The Moroccan hosts of this week’s talks had been planning a celebratory meeting to cap this unprecedented run of activity. Instead, organisers awoke on Wednesday morning to find the world’s wealthiest country had a president-elect who has called global warming a hoax, pledged to “cancel” the Paris agreement and vowed to stop US funding of UN climate programmes entirely. “They were in absolute shock,” said one person. The EU and Japan reaffirmed their commitment to the agreement, which requires all countries to come up with a plan to curb climate change to stop global temperatures rising more than 2°C from preindustrial levels.
But neither they nor China were willing to offer extra cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to fill the vacuum a US withdrawal would create. Nor did they offer additional money for an agreement needing billions of dollars in public and private funds to be channelled to poor countries to tackle climate change. — © The Financial Times