By Imran Khalid
[FILE] US President Joe Biden (R) and China’s President Xi Jinping (L) meet on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Nusa Dua on the Indonesian resort island of Bali on November 14, 2022. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP)
The one-to-one meeting between President Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali was not expected to make any policy breakthrough, but there was a glimmer of hope that they will be able to give at least an affirmative nod for the resumption of the talks on climate change. This is exactly what happened there to the much relief of the climate activists and enthusiasts, who were quite worried about Beijing’s decision in August to withdraw from the talks as a retaliatory step for Nancy Pelosi’s stopover in Taipei.
In 1998, China and the US signed the Letter of Intent for Cooperation in Urban Air Quality Monitoring Projects between the two, which proved to be the starting point of climate cooperation between the two countries. Since then, both have engaged a marathon of dialogues on the subject matter but with many ups and downs in the last two decades. President Barak Obama was the one who actually took the initiative prior to the Paris climate summit of 2015 to initiate the structured climate dialogue with China.
The landmark Paris agreement, which unanimously committed to take up the measures to control and prevent global warming with a quantified objective of maintaining the limits on the global temperature rise at 1.5 degree Celsius (the maximum the experts believe this planet can absorb without any catastrophic effects), was the first serious agreement at global level to address the simmering menace of global warming.
After the Paris agreement, the US-China climate dialogue continued uninterrupted for two years but was suddenly suspended by President Donald Trump, who was used to scorn the subject as a big hoax. Due to personal interest of President Biden, the talks were resumed in 2021 with a renewed enthusiasm. However, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan provoked Beijing to retaliate by boycotting the climate dialogue with the US. After China’s decision to discontinue communication with the US on the climate change, the situation was quite grim, and talks were not expected to resume any time soon. But Biden very effectively utilised his meeting with President Xi to convince him to restart the climate talks. The resumption of communication is certainly the most positive development.
The two largest economies are also the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters but also bitter rivals as China seeks to expand its influence around the world and the US is also trying to snub this attempt. Last year, both sides agreed to collaborate emphatically on designing regulatory frameworks and environmental standards on reducing greenhouse gases this decade, as well as formulating policies on decarbonization and deploying green technologies such as carbon capture. But this fervor did not last more than few months and political compulsions unsettled the whole momentum.
The problem was quite tricky on the US side; two consecutive presidents with entirely opposite thinking on the climate change. Trump, a bitter opponent of the Paris agreement, while Biden, an ardent fan of the same. Being a passionate lover of fossil fuels, Donald Trump never hesitated to bluntly criticise the Paris climate accord during his election campaign. He showed his disdain for the Paris agreement after entering the White House and withdrew from it in a much snobbish style.
“It is time to put Youngstown, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; and Pittsburgh, PA, along with many, many other locations within our great country, before Paris, France,” he said while announcing his decision to exit from the Paris accord in 2017. America’s absence hampered the progress in implementation of the Paris Agreement. A kind of pessimism enveloped the signatory countries, which gradually started showing indifference towards the action plan to launch ambitious emissions-reduction schedules.
Trump’s decision was the main catalyst for such depressing scenario. Many countries, which previously made very enthusiastic commitments, started showing complete disinterest in the absence of the United States. At the same time, China, too, the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions at this moment and the leading user of that fossil fuels, coal, was also relived of the pressure to show same level of commitment any more.
Trump was directly responsible for this erosion of the momentum towards collaboration that indirectly encouraged further rise in carbon emission and temperature across the planet – reportedly, emissions were increased from 35.5 billion metric tons to 36.4 billion metric tons in 2021, with a dreadful rate of 2.5%. These emissions are aggravating the greenhouse-gas effect responsible for unabating global warming. For the last seven years in a row, the planet is experiencing unprecedented increase in heat waves, draughts, floods, forest fires and crop failures.
President Joe Biden, fulfilling his key campaign promise, despite tough resistance from Republicans, rejoined the Paris agreement on his very first day in the White House and launched a campaign for rapid transition to clean energy. In August this year, President was able to get the Congress approval for the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, a landmark legislation, which provides $369 billion in loans, grants, and tax credits for green-energy initiatives. There is no doubt that President Biden, in spite of being a rather unglamorous statesman, is working very passionately to reposition America’s global-warming diplomacy as the key plank of his foreign policy. Appointment of John Kerry, former Secretary of State who was the focal person of the then President Barak Obama to spearhead collaboration efforts with the China, as US President’s Special Envoy for Climate is reflection of his commitment towards this critical matter for the survival of life on this planet. John Kerry has been instrumental in convincing the Chinese to enhance their collaboration with the Americans on the climate change.
A lot of countries are now increasingly feeling the “heat” of climate change – with frequent extreme weather and natural disasters – which is now pushing them to be more active in all those forums that are working towards collaborative work for the climate change. The Sixth Assessment Report the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released in April says the interaction between climate change, ecosystems and human society is mainly negative and harmful.
This means human are now more prone to climate risks than ever in the history of mankind. Human survival is at serious risk because of this climate change, and global warming has drastically changed the weather patterns, causing frequent heat waves, heavy floods, melting glaciers and droughts in many parts of the world, which will further exacerbate global food insecurity – by June 2022, the number of people suffering from acute food insecurity in 82 countries grew to 345 million from 135 million in 2019.
In a recent article in the Nature, it is argued that if all the current climate pledges are honored, only them it would be possible to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius. But this is not practically possible to see all the countries to fulfill their commitments towards the climate change, so this target is far beyond the reach at the moment. The United Nations Environment Programme’s Emissions Gap Report 2022, “A Closing Window – The Climate Crisis Urgently Requires Rapid Social Transformation” released on October 27, 2022, says the international community is far from meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, and there is no reliable path to limit warming to 1.5 C.
This is a very serious situation and that needs immediate attention of the US and China, the two main contributors towards heat-trapping gases. Although the climate crisis is not expected to be resolved through the Sino-US cooperation alone, however, if China and the US do not cooperate to tackle the climate challenge, global climate governance can never succeed in achieving its prime objectives. The good news is that both President Xi Jinping and President Biden are on the same page with regard to the resumption of bilateral climate dialogue. This will greatly help in motivating other countries to re-align their national climate policies with the Paris climate accord to move towards swift implementation of the key projects. Dr. Khalid wrote from Karachi, Pakistan.