Opinion | COP26: why US-China rivalry could be the death of climate change diplomacy

Name: What is China doing about climate change?
Uploaded: 2021-10-27T19:30:21.000Z
Duration: 6 min 55 s
Description: What is China doing about climate change?

Even though both sides know they must act quickly to avert a global climate catastrophe, all evidence suggests conventional diplomacy has failed

Rather than collaborate to solve an existential threat, the world’s response to climate change will succeed or fail on the basis of national self-interest

Reading Time:4 minutes

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John Kampfner

Published: 3:30am, 28 Oct 2021Updated: 5:09pm, 31 Oct 2021

Climate change is the ultimate test of whether it is possible for countries both to compete for global dominance and collaborate to save the world. If the United States and China cannot work together on this issue, they cannot work together anywhere. Together, the two powers are responsible for more than 40 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions.

Hence, many worry that without Sino-American cooperation to reduce emissions, no meaningful progress will be made. We will all be doomed. Even though both sides know they must act quickly to prevent a climate catastrophe, the latest evidence suggests conventional diplomacy is not working.

In the first US-China meeting of the Biden era, in Alaska in March, China’s senior foreign affairs official Yang Jiechi launched a tirade against US Secretary of State Antony Blinken after Blinken called out China’s human rights record.

In April, US President Joe Biden’s climate envoy and former secretary of state John Kerry became the first senior administration official to visit China, where he met his counterpart Xie Zhenhua. The two have talked many times since, yet it is not clear they have achieved anything.

It is becoming increasingly obvious there is little chance of one side coaxing the other to improve its performance through traditional diplomatic channels. The US strategy has three fundamental problems.

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What is China doing about climate change?

For starters, the international community has factored into its own strategic calculus the possibility that Donald Trump – or at least Trumpism – will return to power in the US. Second, the Biden administration insists that climate policy can be separated from other issues, hence Kerry’s forceful rejection of the idea that China can buy America’s silence on human rights.