U.S. CLIMATE ENVOY TRAVELS TO BEIJING TO BEGIN NEGOTIATIONS

Kerry tasked with finding ways to work together with China

For nearly a year, talks between the planet’s two biggest polluters, China and the United States, have been suspended as the impacts of global warming have only grown more intense in the form of deadly heat, drought, floods and wildfires.

John Kerry, President Joe Biden’s special envoy for climate change, is set to arrive in Beijing today to restart climate negotiations with the Chinese government. He is slated to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, and other officials for three days of talks, with the goal of finding ways to work together on climate change despite simmering tensions between the two countries on trade, human rights and other issues.

Kerry has said he hopes to work on at least three issues with China: curbing methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that leaks from oil and gas wells; deforestation; and phasing out China’s coal consumption.

The United States has also been prodding China to set new, stronger climate targets, including an earlier date by which emissions will peak.

In an interview, Kerry said he hopes to come away with some “specific new actions that will get the ball moving” on driving down emissions.

The United States and China are the world’s biggest economies, the world’s biggest investors in renewable energy and, most critically, the world’s biggest fossil fuel polluters. Together they spew about 40 percent of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Analysts agree that the speed with which the two countries slash emissions and help other nations transition to wind, solar and other forms of clean energy will determine whether the planet can avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change.

“There is no solution to climate change without China,” said David Sandalow, a veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations now at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. “The world’s two largest emitters should be talking to each other about this existential threat.”

China watchers are keeping expectations low for this meeting, in part because the Chinese government, like most governments, doesn’t like to appear as if it has been pressured to act. Observers don’t expect big new pronouncements on emissions targets or cutting coal.

“I don’t think they’re going to want to seem like John Kerry came there and told them what to do,” said Michael Greenstone, an economics professor at the University of Chicago.

One possible outcome is that both countries agree to regular U.s.-china meetings on climate change. Experts say that would be a strong outcome and could smooth the way for the United Nations climate summit slated for November in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The talks follow a year of extremely heightened tensions.

Beijing froze high-level diplomatic engagement with the United States in August after then-house Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Dsan Francisco, traveled to Taiwan, the island democracy that Beijing claims as its territory. In recent weeks, Biden has sent several Cabinet secretaries to Beijing in an effort to stabilize the relationship. Kerry’s trip follows visits to China by Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, and Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is slated to visit China after Kerry.