China, US must build on climate pledges
- Both countries may have recommitted to the fight against global warming, but there is a long way to go yet
Climate change is the biggest challenge of the 21st century, including the risk of conflict and humanitarian crises. Cooperation between China and the United States to combat global warming is paramount.
After all, if the world’s two biggest economies cannot work together on climate change, what can they cooperate on?
That question loomed ahead of the recent summit between presidents Xi Jinping and Joe Biden on the sidelines of the Apec leaders’ meeting in San Francisco. It was, thankfully, pre-empted by an eleventh-hour agreement between their climate envoys, Xie Zhenhua and John Kerry.
As a result, the two sides will relaunch a working group on climate cooperation that lapsed with the serious deterioration in bilateral ties earlier this year.
The accord, after four days of talks, rekindled hopes that the rival superpowers could still work together to tackle global challenges. To the relief of climate activists and scientists, it came two weeks ahead of the next United Nations climate summit – Cop 28 or Conference of the Parties – beginning in Dubai on November 30.
Failure by the two biggest carbon emitters to relaunch the joint working group would have put a dampener on what is supposed to be global cooperative action to save the planet from catastrophic warming.
The two countries agreed to pursue efforts to triple renewable energy capacity globally by 2030 and to accelerate transition from coal, oil and gas. They also agreed to include methane in emission cuts from 2035 and cooperate over the control of non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions, and to curb deforestation and plastic pollution.
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Climate experts have welcomed the agreements, although noting the absence of any pledge from China on phasing out use of dirty coal or the building of new coal power plants.
Both sides also recommitted to the 2015 Paris climate accord goals of capping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial levels. More progress, particularly on energy transition and coal, is increasingly urgent, with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres warning that present trends put the planet on course towards an unsustainable temperature rise of 3 degrees Celsius this century.
