US climate envoy John Kerry shakes hands with his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua before a meeting in Beijing on July 17. Photo: Reuters
Opinion
Andrew Sheng
Andrew Sheng
On climate action, the US and China have chosen Sunnylands over the badlands – but is it enough?
As global warming intensifies, the only alternative to destruction is cooperation, as shown by the US-China landmark Sunnylands climate accord ahead of COP28. But where is the money to fund such plans?
In Hong Kong, where the Asia Global Dialogue is held, headlines from two newspapers show how we can inhabit parallel mental worlds despite living on one planet.
The New York Times had two columnists on page one: Tom Friedman on how “It’s time for a Biden peace plan” and Peter Goodman on how “Two partners in the global economy are splitting up”. In the Opinion section, Farah Stockman, a member of the Times editorial board, bid “Farewell to the US-China golden age”.
Contrast this with China Daily, whose front page was about Chinese President Xi Jinping being “warmly welcomed” in San Francisco, and his vision to drive Asia-Pacific growth, with a leading article on the importance of the Sunnylands statement on US-China climate cooperation ahead of the COP28 UN climate change conference in Dubai.
One newspaper took an “us vs them” view. The other looked for cooperation and consensus. You be the judge of who is right in this messed-up world.
Writing about the Israel-Gaza war, Friedman framed America’s choices as binary: “We will either have to become captives of Netanyahu’s strategy – which could take us all down with him – or articulate our own American vision for how the Gaza war must end.”
Yet the real existential threat facing the world is not war, but how climate heating – and the natural disasters stemming from the human excesses that breed the conditions for our mutually assured destruction – is accelerating human extinction. COP28, therefore, is vital to all our futures.
01:07
US climate envoy John Kerry meets China’s top diplomat Wang Yi in latest bid to repair frayed ties
US climate envoy John Kerry meets China’s top diplomat Wang Yi in latest bid to repair frayed ties
The Sunnylands statement, crafted by US climate envoy John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua in California, may be the most meaningful gesture of cooperation that the planet’s two largest economies, the US and China, can make to meet the climate crisis.
Importantly, the two countries “remain committed to the effective implementation of the Paris Agreement and decisions thereunder, including the Glasgow climate pact and the Sharm el-Sheikh implementation plan”. They have also decided to “operationalise” their climate action working group, “to engage in dialogue and cooperation to accelerate concrete climate actions”.
This will focus on energy transition, methane and other non-carbon greenhouse gas emissions, the circular economy and resource efficiency, subnational cooperation among states, provinces and cities, forest regeneration, and basically supporting the work of COP28.
Sounds good, but where is the money to fund these action plans?
The biggest problem with multilateral cooperation on climate warming, exemplified by the UN-convened COPs (conferences of the parties signed on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Kyoto Protocol and/or Paris Agreement), is that it seems to be all talk and precious little action.
06:45
“I can’t see my family die like this”: The Kyoto Protocol’s impact 25 years on
“I can’t see my family die like this”: The Kyoto Protocol’s impact 25 years on
We need to shift towards funding action that can make a difference. Few rich nations are in a giving mood and even Sweden, traditionally one of the most generous, is cutting back on official development aid. Yet the value of military aid committed to Ukraine since the Russian invasion and to Israel since October 7 has exceeded the US$100 billion climate finance that rich nations pledged in 2009 to provide every year by 2020 – which has yet to be met.
There is the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, a coalition of 500 financial institutions managing US$130 trillion of assets, which is committed to transitioning the global economy to net zero emissions – but it is more of a stick (it won’t lend or invest unless net zero objectives are met) than a carrot.
Even the United Nations has admitted that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is off track, with only 12 per cent of the goals met. The estimated financing gap of around US$2 trillion-US$4 trillion annually must be plugged. To get to net zero globally by 2050 will take as much as US$9.2 trillion annually, according to McKinsey & Company. All of which means: no money, no action.
03:15
COP27 delivers historic global warming ‘loss and damage’ fund, but no progress on fossil fuels
COP27 delivers historic global warming ‘loss and damage’ fund, but no progress on fossil fuels
As climate activist Emily Atkins noted: “In three decades, the COP talks have yet to produce any agreement to phase out, or even phase down fossil fuels, the leading cause of climate change.”
Yet the real problem is not fossil fuels. It is our excessive demand for energy, arising from our relentless demand for instant gratification financed by freely printed debt. As long as we consume in excess of our needs, testing the planetary limits, we are doomed to boil.
There are physical limits to growth, as the Club of Rome correctly predicted in 1972, yet we seem hard-wired to consume – at everyone else’s expense. The first-class passengers on Spaceship Earth are preaching to the economy-class passengers to tighten their belts even as they consume more to prepare their escape pods to Mars.
In this interconnected and entangled world, we cannot look only at carbon emissions. We must also examine the physical limits of the natural resources that keep us all in ecological balance. Professor Simon Michaux has shown convincingly (at least to me) that if we shift towards non-fossil fuels, we will very quickly run out of essential minerals like copper and lithium. Cutting carbon alone just does not add up.
The Thucydides Trap and other such divisive ways of thinking that hinder collective action are essentially mental traps. If we agree that we are on a non-sustainable path, then either we cooperate to survive or accelerate our mutual destruction by fighting to the last person. Sunnylands or the badlands, that is our fateful choice.
Andrew Sheng is a former central banker who writes on global issues from an Asian perspective
