Global momentum is building on the climate crisis, but major action is impossible without two nations, China and the US, which together account for more than half of emissions — and whose governments do not get along.
Ahead of the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, experts believe that breakthrough US-China cooperation could be the catalyst for a historic agreement on climate change — but also that frosty ties between Washington and Beijing are not, so to speak, the end of the world.
Both nations have stepped up efforts to curb emissions, although analysts say that their actions are far too modest to meet a UN-backed goal of keeping the planet’s temperature rise to 1.5°C and avoiding the worst effects of climate change.
“If the national governments of China and the US are not able to agree on anything of substance, I think there may well be room for serious action anyway, because both countries are able and willing to do a lot on their own,” said Mary Nichols, who led major climate initiatives as chair of the California Air Resources Board and is now a fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
“But that doesn’t mean that it’s irrelevant,” she said. “Without an explicit agreement, other countries will be reluctant to act.”
US President Joe Biden’s administration has described Beijing as his country’s top long-term challenge, and raised pressure on concerns from human rights to Taiwan and trade, but has sought engagement on climate.
“It is not a mystery that China and the US have many differences, but on climate, cooperation — it is the only way to break free from the world’s current mutual suicide pact,” US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry said in a speech recently.
Kerry has traveled twice to China despite a chill in relations, but on his latest visit, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) issued a warning.
“It is impossible for China-US climate cooperation to be elevated above the overall environment of China-US relations,” Wang said.
The remarks raised concern in Washington that the Biden-Kerry approach could backfire, allowing China to use climate as leverage.
However, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) soon afterward took a major step by telling the UN that Beijing would stop funding coal in its overseas infrastructure-building blitz, although it is still investing at home in the dirty, but politically sensitive form of energy.
Alex Wang (王立德), faculty co-director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that China and the US could engage in a “race to the top” on who does more.
“It improves China’s global reputation to appear as a positive actor on climate,” Wang said.
“If the leaders in China feel like they are becoming laggards, I think it would lead to some pressure to act further.” he said.
Nichols, who helped design California’s cap-and-trade program that creates a market with incentives for reducing emissions, said one major step would be if China agreed to link efforts to set a common price on carbon.
“That would, I think, send an extraordinarily strong signal to investors and businesses around the world,” Nichols said.
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