WASHINGTON — John Kerry, President Biden’s special envoy for climate change, said Thursday he will travel to China next week to restart negotiations on global warming between the world’s two biggest polluters. world.
Mr. Kerry’s trip will mark the first climate talks between the United States and China since August, when Beijing broke off talks in anger after Nancy Pelosi, who was the House speaker at the time, visited Taiwan. that. The talks come as global temperatures are the highest ever recorded, driven by the burning of fossil fuels as well as the El Niño climate pattern, which has baked both countries 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 consensus.”
The trip to China will be Mr. Kerry’s third as climate representative. This follows visits by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen aimed at strengthening the uneasy relationship between Washington and Beijing. Mr. Kerry said he plans to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, and other officials “at the highest level” during the week of July 16.
China and the United States are the two largest investors in clean energy. Their policies have a major impact on whether the world can avoid the worst consequences of global warming.
However, there is a deep divide in the speed with which each country should stop the fossil fuel emissions that are dangerously warming the planet.
Republicans, who have been critical of the trip by Mr. Blinken and Ms. Yellen in China, denounced Mr. Kerry’s trip and accused him of defaming the United States.
“Despite not being confirmed by the US Senate, John Kerry is still negotiating with the Chinese Communist Party to push a radical Green New Deal agenda that harms American interests,” said Representative James Comer. , Republican of Kentucky, in a statement. He accused Mr. Kerry made a “closed-door deal” with the Chinese.
Next Thursday, Mr. Kerry is scheduled to appear before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs oversight panel.
The United States under President Biden has pledged to cut emissions by nearly half by 2030. The Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress last year invests at least $370 billion in wind, solar and other clean energy . Along with stricter limits on tailpipe and smokestack pollution proposed by Mr. Biden, the legislation could put the US within striking distance of its goal.
China’s emissions continue to grow but Xi Jinping, China’s president, has said it will lift its carbon pollution by 2030 and then stop adding it to the atmosphere entirely by 2060. China is burning more coal than the entire world combined. Last year it approved more new coal power plants than at any time in the past seven years.
But scientists warn that industrialized countries must turn away from fossil fuels now, to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.
Mr. Kerry said he intended to urge China to accelerate its phase-out of coal, to combat deforestation and to release a plan to reduce emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that leaks from wells. of oil and gas. Those are the issues China says it will address below a 2021 joint agreement with the United States which so far has not been implemented.
“We’re really looking for some specific actions that will move the ball here,” Mr. Kerry. “If we don’t get China to work with us very aggressively to tackle this challenge, we all have a bigger problem.”
Thom Woodroofe, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said the formal re-establishment of routine climate discussions would be the “crown jewel” of any outcome from Mr Kerry’s trip.
“Right now, we’re one geopolitical problem away from ending the climate talks,” said Mr. Woodroofe, noting that it took a year to “get back to where we were” after China stopped the diplomatic talks on military, narcotics and climate change issues due to Ms. Taiwan trip. Pelosi.
Of those three only China agreed to bring back the climate change talks.
Mr. Kerry, 79, and Mr. Xie, 74, came out of retirement to lead his country’s climate negotiations. The men collaborated on some of the defining international policy victories of the last decade, including the 2015 Paris Agreement in which nearly every country pledged to cut emissions to prevent average global temperatures from rising. of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels. That’s the threshold beyond which scientists say the likelihood of catastrophic climate impacts will significantly increase. The planet has warmed by an average of 1.2 degrees Celsius.
Mr. Xie and Mr. Kerry met several times on the sidelines of a United Nations summit in Egypt last year, though aides said they were light-hearted discussions centered more around when more meaningful negotiations could resume.
Mr. Xie also had a stroke this year but is now “better,” Mr. Kerry, adding that the two men are seeing each other almost.
