John Kerry visits China to resume climate talks

WASHINGTON — John Kerry, President Biden’s special envoy for climate change, said Thursday he would travel to China next week to resume global warming negotiations between the world’s two biggest polluters.

Mr Kerry’s trip marks the first climate talks between the United States and China since August, when Beijing closed talks in anger after Nancy Pelosi, who was speaker of the House of Representatives at the time, visited Taiwan. The talks come as the highest global temperatures ever recorded, driven by fossil fuel burning and the El Niño climate pattern, fry both nations and much of the planet.

“We need real cooperation,” Mr Kerry said in an interview. “China and the United States are the two largest economies in the world and we are also the two largest emitters. It is clear that we have a special responsibility to find common ground.”

The trip to China would be Kerry’s third as a climate envoy. It follows visits by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to stabilize the uneasy relationship between Washington and Beijing. Mr Kerry said he planned to meet his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, and other officials “at the highest level” during the week of July 16.

China and the United States are also the two largest investors in clean energy. Their policies have a major impact on whether the world will avert the worst effects of global warming.

Yet there are deep divisions over the speed at which each country should end fossil fuel emissions that are dangerously warming the planet.

Republicans, who criticized Mr Blinken and Ms Yellen’s trip to China, denounced Mr Kerry’s trip, accusing him of undermining the United States.

“Despite not being confirmed by the US Senate, John Kerry is still negotiating with the Chinese Communist Party to push through a radical Green New Deal agenda that is detrimental to US interests,” said Representative James Comer, Republican. of Kentucky, in a statement. He accused Mr Kerry of making “under closed doors” deals with the Chinese.

Next Thursday, Mr. Kerry will appear for the oversight panel of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

The United States under President Biden has pledged to cut emissions by about half by 2030. The Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress last year invests at least $370 billion in wind, solar and other clean energy. Combined with stricter pollution limits on exhaust pipes and chimneys proposed by Mr Biden, the law could put the US within striking distance of its target.

China’s emissions continue to grow, but Xi Jinping, China’s president, has said it will reach its carbon footprint by 2030 and stop adding carbon to the atmosphere altogether by 2060. China burns more coal than the rest of the world combined. Last year, it approved more new coal-fired power plants than at any time in the past seven years.

But scientists warn that industrialized countries must now move away from fossil fuels dramatically to avert the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.

Mr Kerry said he intended to urge China to speed up coal phase-out, curb deforestation and enact a plan to cut emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that leaks from oil and gas wells. to decrease. These are issues that China said it would address a 2021 joint agreement with the United States which has not yet been implemented.

“We’re really looking for some specific moves that are going to move the ball here,” Mr Kerry said. “If we can’t get China to work very aggressively with us to meet this challenge, we all have a bigger problem.”

Thom Woodroofe, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said formally resuming routine climate discussions would be the “crown jewel” of any outcome of Kerry’s journey.

“Right now we are one geopolitical problem away from ending the climate talks,” said Mr Woodroofe, noting that it has taken a year to “get back to where we were” after China ended diplomatic talks on military issues, narcotics and climate change. because of Ms. Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan.

Of those three, China has only agreed to resume climate change negotiations.

Mr Kerry, 79, and Mr Xie, 74, each came out of retirement to lead their country’s climate negotiations. The men have collaborated on some of the defining international policy breakthroughs of the past decade, including the 2015 Paris Agreement, in which nearly every country pledged to reduce emissions to prevent average global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. from the pre-industrial level. That is the threshold above which, according to scientists, the chance of catastrophic climate effects increases significantly. The planet has already warmed an average of 1.2 degrees Celsius.

Mr Xie and Mr Kerry met a few times last year on the sidelines of a United Nations summit in Egypt, though aides said they were light-hearted discussions largely focused on when more substantive negotiations could resume.

Mr. Xie also suffered a stroke this year, but is “much better” now, Mr. Kerry said, adding that the two men met virtually.