Obstacles await U.S., China on climate
The United States and China do not agree on much nowadays, but on climate change both countries are publicly pledging to do more to fight global warming. The problem will be working together on it.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, met in Shanghai with his counterpart to press China on reducing its carbon emissions, at a time when an emboldened Communist Party leadership has become increasingly dismissive of U.S. demands.
In Beijing’s view, the United States still has much ground to recover after walking away from the Paris climate agreement, the 2015 accord to address the catastrophic effects of warming.
Biden’s commitments to now make climate change a top priority are, to officials in Beijing, merely catching up to China after its leader, Xi Jinping, last year pledged to accelerate the country’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
“The U.S. has neither the moral standing nor the real power to issue orders to China over climate issues,” the Global Times, a Chinese newspaper that often echoes official thinking in nationalist tones, said in an article on Wednesday before Kerry’s visit.
A main purpose of Kerry’s travels to China and elsewhere has been to rally support for Biden’s virtual climate summit of dozens of world leaders next week. Xi has not yet accepted the invitation, but he will join a similar conference on Friday with President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.
There are other challenges, too, that could derail even basic coordination
between the two countries, starting with the sharp deterioration of relations that began under President Donald Trump and shows no sign of improving.
The intensifying rivalry over technology could spill into climate policy, where innovation in energy, batteries, vehicles and carbon storage offer solutions for reducing emissions. Already, American lawmakers are demanding that the United States block Chinese products from being used in the infrastructure projects that Biden has proposed.
“If there is a serious lack of basic trust, strategic and political, between China and the U.S., that will inevitably hold back deepening cooperation in the specialized sphere of climate change,” Zou Ji, the president of Energy Foundation China, who has advised Chinese climate negotiators, wrote recently in a Chinese foreign policy journal.
Cooperation between the United States, the worst emitter of greenhouse gases historically, and China, the worst in the world today,
could spur greater efforts from other countries. China accounts for 28 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions; the United States, in second place, emits 14 percent of the global total.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other U.S. officials have said they are prepared to cooperate with the Chinese government on issues such as climate, even as they confront it on others, including the crackdowns in Hong Kong and Xinjiang and the menacing military operations against Taiwan and in the South China Sea.
It is not clear that Xi’s government is prepared to compartmentalize in the same way. Officials have indicated that the souring of relations has spoiled the entire range of issues between the two countries.
Chinese officials and state media outlets noted Kerry’s arrival but did not play it up, except to say that he would meet with Xie Zhenhua,
the chief Chinese negotiator in the talks that led to the Paris agreement. Xie, 71, was pulled out of semiretirement this year to resume the role of China’s climate envoy.
Chinese leaders are drafting an “action plan” for Xi’s goal of reaching a peak in carbon dioxide emissions before 2030. That plan could give China an opening to accelerate toward an earlier peak — possibly by mid-decade — a goal that Chinese and foreign experts have urged.
At a video meeting with Canadian and European officials last month, Xie praised the return of the United States to the climate change negotiations, according to an official Chinese summary of the meeting. He also appeared to gently suggest that the Biden administration should not assume that it naturally belonged at the head of the table.
“We welcome the United States’ return to the Paris accord,” Xie said, “and look forward to the United States striving to catch up and exercise leadership.”