U.S. and China Restart Climate Discussions After Months-Long Silence

Communication about local weather change between the United States and China screeched to a halt in August amid escalating tensions over contested Taiwan. China reduce off local weather cooperation on the time, but now talks have resumed, as first reported by the New York Times.

President Joe Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping met in particular person on Monday in Indonesia for the first time since the start of the covid-19 pandemic. The Bali assembly lasted about three hours, lined a broad set of worldwide points—together with the threat of nuclear war—and occurred simply earlier than the official starting of the annual Group 20 (G20) summit, the place leaders from 20 of the largest world economies meet.

Climate change was apparently one of many many factors on the assembly agenda. “I believe, China and the United States to play key roles in addressing global challenges, from climate changes, to food insecurity, and to — for us to be able to work together,” mentioned Biden in remarks following the assembly.

“Humanity [is] confronted with unprecedented challenges. The world has come to a crossroads,” mentioned Xi, who echoed Biden’s name for collaboration throughout tough instances. Functional communication and teamwork between the U.S. and China is critically necessary, particularly on the subject of local weather change. China and the U.S. are respectively Earth’s No. 1 and No. 2 greenhouse gasoline emitters, with the U.S. far forward of China by way of per-capita emissions. Together, the 2 nations produce about 40% of the world’s annual atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Prior to the three-month breakdown in diplomacy, China and the U.S. had been making joint maneuvers to cut back emissions. In 2021, political leaders from each nations introduced their intentions to work collectively on local weather coverage. The U.S. and China later launched a joint statement re-affirming their environmental commitments and outlining cooperative emissions and power targets, following final yr’s U.N. local weather convention.

Biden spoke at this yr’s COP27 in Egypt simply final week. During that speech, he outlined latest local weather coverage actions, just like the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, and mentioned that the U.S. authorities would begin requiring fossil gasoline firms to handle methane leaks. However, he didn’t handle the thought of local weather reparations—the place the wealthy nations most liable for local weather change pay for damages within the often-poorer, most impacted nations—which is on the COP agenda for the primary time. Nor did Biden announce any new targets to additional scale back emissions.

Nonetheless, key diplomats and local weather activists at COP27 have been heartened to listen to that Xi and Biden have been, as soon as once more, discussing our collective planetary destiny. “The two biggest emitters need to be cooperative and ambitious,” mentioned Spain’s local weather minister, Teresa Ribera, to Reuters. And Manish Bapna, the president and CEO of the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, informed the outlet that “this unequivocal signal from the two largest economies to work together to address the climate crisis is more than welcome; it’s essential.”

Both China and the U.S. have begun to reap the obvious penalties of local weather change. China skilled its most intense heatwave on file this summer season, which lasted greater than 72 days and induced widespread drought. Heatwaves, droughts, floods, and wildfire all affected giant areas of the U.S. in 2022.