Climate change: US and China must work together to cut carbon emissions, experts say

Environmental experts say the best way to curb the threat of climate change is for the world’s two biggest economies to collaborate on slashing carbon emissions. But amid other conflicts, China and the US are using environmental issues as another means to attack each other.

The accusations followed a US state department report published late last month that took aim at what it called China’s “unsafe” and “unsustainable” practices, including along the route of its Belt and Road Initiative.

The back and forth comes as China has boosted its profile in addressing climate change with President Xi Jinping promising in September to make the country carbon neutral by 2060. Meanwhile, the US, under President Donald Trump, has rolled back its climate protections, most notably by exiting the landmark Paris Agreement.

That, along with a downward spiral in relations over trade, technology and the Covid-19 pandemic, has drastically set back the two powers’ climate cooperation as compared to five years ago. Then, China and the US, under Barack Obama, signed the agreement in Paris after years of working to find common ground.

But Thursday’s presidential debate in the United States gave a glimpse into how a US administration under Democratic candidate and Obama vice-president Joe Biden could reset the American climate agenda.

During the debate, Biden called climate change “an existential threat to humanity” that the US had a “moral obligation” to confront. He repeated his pledge to rejoin the Paris Agreement, which aims to keep global warming to well below the 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) rise that scientists say would lead to flooding in many coastal cities, widespread drought and amplify other natural disasters.