Climate Change Cooperation

U.S.-China Cooperation in Overcoming Climate Change

The Committee believes that climate change poses an existential threat to both China and the United States, as it does to the world at large. Both countries occupy large continental spaces with multiple ecological zones — all vulnerable to the severe impacts of global warming, including severe storms, floods, heat waves, and sea-level rise. At the same time, our two countries have a crucial role to play in overcoming climate change: China and the U.S. are at present the world’s number one and two leading emitters of greenhouse gases (although the U.S. is responsible for the largest historic accumulations of GHGs), while both are leaders in the development and deployment of green technologies.

We deem it essential, therefore, that the two countries cooperate in slowing the pace of warming by working together to assure international compliance with the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 and by sharing transformative green technologies with each other and with other countries, especially developing nations that are unable to afford these promising technologies. Cooperation of this sort, we believe, can also help dispel the Cold War environment currently besieging Beijing and Washington and lead to cooperation on other critical issues.

Useful resources:

China Dialogue: Provides original reporting on China’s responses to the challenges of climate change, water scarcity, and environmental degradation. To learn more, go to https://chinadialogue.net/en/

China’s Climate Security Vulnerabilities: A report from the Center for Climate and Security on China’s exposure to the extreme effects of climate change. (To view the full report, click here)

United States and China Sign Landmark Agreement on Climate Change Cooperation
Assessment by Michael Klare, Nov. 20, 2023 

On Nov. 14, the U.S. Department of State and the Chinese Ministry for Foreign Affairs published the text of the “Sunnylands Statement on Enhancing Cooperation to Address the Climate Crisis,” an agreement between the U.S. and China for deeper cooperation in overcoming the global climate crisis. The agreement was negotiated Nov. 4-7 at the Sunnylands estate in southern California by U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry and China’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, Xie Zhenhua. 

The Biden administration has placed a high priority on enhancing U.S.-China cooperation in the climate field, viewing such cooperation as a means of both slowing planetary warming – a key objective given that the U.S. and China represent the world’s top two emitters of heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs) – and of balancing U.S. hostility and competition in other fields.  

In April 2021, the two sides signed the “U.S.-China Joint Statement Addressing the Climate Crisis,” pledging close cooperation in this area. But Chinese President Xi Jinping suspended these collaborative ventures in August 2022, when then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in what was viewed in Beijing as a provocative move.  

Xi agreed to restart the process at a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali, in Nov. 2022. Subsequently, Kerry and Xie met in Beijing in July 2023, without achieving much observable progress but apparently setting the stage for the more successful negotiations at Sunnylands in early November.  

The resulting Sunnylands Statement is notable for progress in both political/diplomatic and practical terms. 

From a political and diplomatic perspective, it reaffirms the commitment made by Presidents Obama and Xi in 2014 to exert joint U.S.-China leadership in rallying the international community behind what became the Paris Climate Agreement of Dec. 2015 (under which an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations agreed to take concrete action to limit global warming to no more than 2 degree Celsius above the pre-Industrial era) and apply it to the forthcoming 28th Conference of the Parties (COP 28) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Dubai, where further action to implement the Paris Agreement will be considered. 

“Both countries stress the importance of COP 28 in responding meaningfully to the climate crisis during this critical decade and beyond,” the Sunnylands Statement asserts. “They are aware of the important role they play in terms of both national responses and working together cooperatively to address the goals of the Paris Agreement and promote multilateralism. They will work together and with other Parties to the Convention and the Paris Agreement to rise up to one of the greatest challenges of our time for present and future generations of humankind.” 

Without such a commitment to “work together” in rallying international support for meaningful advances at COP 28, it is unlikely that significant progress can be achieved. 

From a practical perspective, the Sunnylands Statement is significant in that it calls for the resumption of a wide range of collaborative activities between U.S. and Chinese research institutes, companies, and government agencies in speeding the transition to renewable sources of energy and otherwise reducing emissions of GHGs.  

For example, both sides agreed to restart the U.S.-China Energy Efficiency Forum “to deepen policy exchanges on energy-saving and carbon-reducing solutions in key areas, including industry, buildings, transportation, and equipment.”

Both countries also agreed to “pursue efforts to triple renewable energy capacity globally by 2030 and intend to sufficiently accelerate renewable energy deployment in their respective economies through 2030 from 2020 levels so as to accelerate the substitution for coal, oil and gas generation, and thereby anticipate post-peaking meaningful absolute power sector emission reduction, in this critical decade of the 2020s.” This appears to be the first time China has agreed to specific emissions targets in any part of its economy. 

For key excerpts from the Sunnylands Statement, see below. For the full text, click here

Sunnylands Statement on Enhancing Cooperation to Address the Climate Crisis
U.S. Department of State, Office of the Spokesperson, Nov. 14, 2023 

Below are excerpts from the statement issued by the U.S. Dept. of State on Nov. 14, 2023 regarding cooperation between the U.S. and China in slowing the pace of global climate change. The agreement was negotiated between U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry and China Special Envoy for Climate Change Xie Zhenhua at the Sunnylands Estate in southern California on Nov. 4-7. Several provisions refer to COP 28, the 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), to be held Nov. 30-Dec. 13 in Dubai, United Arab Republics. 

The United States and China recognize that the climate crisis has increasingly affected countries around the world. Alarmed by the best available scientific findings including the IPCC [UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change] Sixth Assessment Report, the United States and China remain committed to the effective implementation of the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement [of Dec. 15]… to hold the global average temperature increase to well below 2 degrees C and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees C, including efforts to keep 1.5 degrees C within reach.   

Both countries stress the importance of COP 28 in responding meaningfully to the climate crisis during this critical decade and beyond. They are aware of the important role they play in terms of both national responses and working together cooperatively to address the goals of the Paris Agreement and promote multilateralism. They will work together and with other Parties to the Convention and the Paris Agreement to rise up to one of the greatest challenges of our time for present and future generations of humankind. 

Both countries support the G20 Leaders Declaration to pursue efforts to triple renewable energy capacity globally by 2030 and intend to sufficiently accelerate renewable energy deployment in their respective economies through 2030 from 2020 levels so as to accelerate the substitution for coal, oil and gas generation, and thereby anticipate post-peaking meaningful absolute power sector emission reduction, in this critical decade of the 2020s.  

Both sides agree to restart the U.S.-China Energy Efficiency Forum to deepen policy exchanges on energy-saving and carbon-reducing solutions in key areas including industry, buildings, transportation, and equipment.  

The United States and China intend to recommence bilateral dialogues on energy policies and strategies, carry out exchanges on mutually agreed topics, and facilitate track II activities to enhance pragmatic cooperation. 

“U.S. and China Agree to Displace Fossil Fuels by Ramping Up Renewables”
Lisa Friedman, N.Y. Times, online, Nov. 14, 2023

In this article, Lis Friedman of the N.Y. Times describes the “Sunnylands Statement on Enhancing Cooperation to Address the Climate Crisis” negotiated by U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry and China Special Envoy for Climate Change Xie Zhenhua at the Sunnylands estate in southern California on Nov. 4-7 and released to the public on Nov. 14.  

The author indicates that the agreement calls for a significant increase in U.S.-China cooperation on the climate front, particularly in the research and diplomatic areas, but excludes any binding measures that would hold the two sides to specific targets in emissions reductions. The article also highlights the importance of U.S.-China cooperation in setting the stage for COP 28, the 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), to be held Nov. 30-Dec. 13 in Dubai, United Arab Republics. 

The statements of cooperation released separately by the United States and China on [Nov. 14] do not include a promise by China to phase out its heavy use of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, or to stop permitting and building new coal plants…. But both countries agreed to “pursue efforts to triple renewable energy capacity globally by 2030.” That growth should reach levels high enough “so as to accelerate the substitution for coal, oil and gas generation,” the agreement says. Both countries anticipate “meaningful absolute power sector emission reduction” in this decade, it says. That appears to be the first time China has agreed to specific emissions targets in any part of its economy. 

The agreement comes two weeks before representatives from nearly 200 countries converge in Dubai as part of the United Nations climate talks known as COP28. The United States and China have an outsize role to play there as nations debate whether to phase out fossil fuel.

“This lays the foundation for the negotiations in Dubai,” said David Sandalow, a veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations who is now a fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. “It sends a strong signal to other countries that this language works, and more broadly that differences can be overcome.” 

As part of the deal, China agreed to set reduction targets for all greenhouse gas emissions. That is significant because the current Chinese climate goal addresses only carbon dioxide, leaving out methane, nitrous oxide and other gases that are acting as a blanket around the planet.

The US and China must unite to fight the climate crisis, not each other
--Cooperation is not only in the best interests of all countries, but is absolutely necessary for the survival of the planet

By Senator Bernie Sanders, The Guardian, Aug. 21, 2023 

In this article, U.S. Senator and former presidential contender Bernie Sanders argues that the U.S. and China both face catastrophic climate change effects and must work together to avert the most apocalyptic outcome of global warming. To read the full article, click here 

Climate change is a global crisis and cannot be solved by any one country alone. If the United States, China and other industrialized countries do not come together to dramatically decrease greenhouse gas emissions, the world we leave our children and future generations will become increasingly unhealthy and uninhabitable. Tragically, the cooperation required to address this existential threat is being undermined by hawks in both the United States and China who are moving us toward a disastrous cold war. 

Now is the time for a radical rethinking of geopolitics to reflect the reality that international cooperation is not only in the best interests of all countries, but is absolutely necessary for the survival of the planet. 

Sanders then describes the calamitous effects of climate change that have experienced by the United States in Summer ’23: prolonged heatwaves with record-breaking temperatures, dense smoke from forest fires in neighboring Canada, floods in Sander’s home state of Vermont, and the tragic wildfire in Maui, responsible for well over 100 deaths. 

But it’s not just the US that is dealing with record-breaking heatwaves and enormous climate-caused devastation, he writes. China experienced record-high temperatures [in July], including the country’s all-time temperature record of 126F (52.2C), and recent flooding has killed about 100 people, destroyed nearly 200,000 homes, displaced some 1.5 million people and caused more than $13bn in damage. 

Despite these dangers, and despite its commitment to reducing its carbon emissions, China continues to install many new coal plants, adding to the climate danger. The Chinese leadership is also responsible for severe human rights abuses, Sanders notes. But to avert even greater climate catastrophes in the future, the U.S. must work with Beijing to slow the pace of warming. 

The US is rightly organizing its allies to press Beijing on these and other issues. But organizing most of our national effort around a zero-sum global confrontation with China is unlikely to change Chinese behavior and will alienate allies and partners. 

Most importantly, it could doom our planet by making climate cooperation impossible between the world’s two largest greenhouse emitters. We need to move in a bold new direction…. Instead of spending enormous amounts of money planning for a war against each other, the US and China should come to an agreement to mutually cut their military budgets and use the savings to move aggressively to improve energy efficiency, move toward sustainable energy and end our reliance on fossil fuels. They should also provide increased support for developing countries who are suffering from the climate crisis through no fault of their own.

Kerry says US must work with China to reach global climate goals: ‘No way that any one country can solve this crisis’
Julia Shapero, The Hill, April 21, 2023 

This article reports on comments made by Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Envoy John Kerry told Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC, following Kerry’s participation in a G-7 ministers’ meeting on climate, energy, and the environment held in Sapporo, Japan, on April 16, 2023. 

John Kerry said on April 21 that the U.S. must work with China to reach global climate goals, even as relations between the two superpowers remain tense. 

“There’s no way that any one country can solve this crisis,” Kerry told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, adding, “It is imperative that China and the United States find a way to cooperate with respect to the climate crisis.”  

Kerry acknowledged that Beijing and Washington have serious issues but emphasized climate change requires immediate attention. “I’m not glossing over any issue whatsoever that we have with China,” he said. “There are real issues, serious ones, and a whole bunch of them. But … we have a clock that’s ticking on climate more immediately. And we have an imperative to try and move.” 

Kerry acknowledged that dialogue between the U.S. and China on key issues has broken down in recent months, in large part due to tensions over Taiwan, but highlighted the necessity for cooperation on climate change… 

“Sometimes things have just crept in and gotten in the way,” Kerry said. “My hope is, because it’s imperative for the planet, that China … helps work with the United States. And it’s not a question of the U.S. giving away something. It’s a question of all of us getting something together by cooperating.”

House GOP Is Investigating Biden Climate Envoy John Kerry
Billy House, Bloomberg, Feb. 2, 2023 

In this article, Bloomberg reports that Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, has written to presidential climate envoy John Kerry demanding answers to questions about his negotiations with his Chinese counterparts and other aspects of his work for President Biden. (Biden made Kerry his Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, a Cabinet-level position that did not require Senate approval, soon after taking office in 2021.) 

House Republicans are launching an investigation into the activities of President Joe Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry, including any dealings with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and left-wing environmental groups. 

House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, demanded in a letter Feb. 2 that Kerry turn over information by Feb. 16 about his office’s actions, spending and staffing. Comer said Kerry had ignored previous requests. 

Comer alleged that Kerry downplays China’s human rights violations and antagonism against the US “while promoting climate negotiations that the CCP does not even appear interested in entering.” 

“To date, you have failed to respond to any of our requests. Yet, you continue to engage in activities that could undermine our economic health, skirt congressional authority, and threaten foreign policy under the guise of climate advocacy,” Comer wrote. 

A State Department representative would not comment directly on the Comer letter, but said the climate envoy’s office was committed to discussing its international efforts with Congress.

China’s Climate Security Vulnerabilities
A Report from the Center for Climate and Security
Written by Erin Sikorsky, Director, Center for Climate & Security
Washington, D.C., November 2022 

In this important and valuable report, the author describes the ways in which China’s security is being threatened by the increasingly harsh effects of climate change and what the Chinese leadership has been doing to better prepare the country for these effects. The study demonstrates clearly that China – like the United States – is highly vulnerable to warming’s harsh effects and that the government will come under increasing pressure to take remedial action. It particular, it notes that warming will pose a growing threat to China’s food and water supplies – potentially endangering the survival of the current regime if it fails to overcome these challenges in a timely and effective manner. Excerpts from the Executive Summary follow. To read the full report, click here  

Like the United States, China faces serious risks to its national security from climate change. From melting glaciers in the Tibetan Plateau to the effect of rising sea levels on the heavily populated Yangtze River Basin and Pearl River Delta, from record heatwaves and drought to unprecedented flooding from extreme precipitation—a range of climate hazards threaten critical Chinese civilian and military infrastructure, risk domestic political instability, including in already restive regions of the country, and challenge Chinese geopolitical interests abroad. 

Key Vulnerabilities: The physical impacts of climate change will create national security vulnerabilities for China, particularly as they intersect with other trends and developments. These vulnerabilities can be organized into three general categories. First are direct risks to military and critical infrastructure, such as coastal shipyards, islands in the South China Sea, railways and energy infrastructure built on permafrost, and the highly populated southern river deltas. Second, are compounding risks to internal political stability, as climate change threatens food and water security across the country. Third are external risks, as climate change increases competition over shared resources and amplifies tensions with neighbors, many of whom are even more exposed than China to climate impacts. 

The Chinese Response: China’s approach to climate security risks largely mirrors its approach to other perceived major challenges: first, the country is pursuing extensive infrastructure and public works interventions while boosting its disaster response capabilities, including in the military. At the same time, the government is attempting to muzzle or minimize public critiques or concerns. Meanwhile, on the international front, Beijing is trying to take advantage of the issue to advance its position vis-à-vis its neighbors and in competition with the United States by casting itself as a leader and partner on climate concerns on the world stage. 

Key Uncertainties: China is often credited with better integrating a long-term approach to its strategic planning than countries in the West. Certainly, aspects of its climate response appear ahead of the curve: investing in icebreakers for the Arctic, positioning itself to dominate the market for critical minerals and clean energy infrastructure, and developing detailed, decades-long adaptation and mitigation strategies. Despite this foresight, there are still uncertainties regarding the trajectory of China’s approach to the security implications of climate change, including tensions between politics and strategic planning and the adequacy of its adaptation strategies, which are largely focused on hard physical infrastructure projects.

China and U.S. to resume climate talks halted after Pelosi trip
Alex Brandon, AP via NBC News, Nov. 14, 2022 

[Note: this article reports on the agreement by Presidents Joe Biden of the U.S. and Xi Jinping of China to resume U.S.-China talks on collaborative efforts to overcome the climate crisis, made at their summit meeting in Bali on Nov. 14. The talks had been suspended by China on Aug. 4, 2022 in response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Aug. 2 visit to Taiwan, which were viewed in Beijing as conferring official U.S. support for Taiwanese independence in repudiation of China’s claim of sovereignty over the island.]

Chinese President Xi Jinping has agreed to resume climate change talks with the United States, President Joe Biden said on Nov. 14, three months after Xi suspended those contacts in anger over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan. China and the U.S. are the world’s No. 1 and 2 climate polluters. Resumption of what have been the two countries’ give-some-and-get-some negotiations on climate efforts is seen as crucial to achieving the massive cuts in use of coal and other fossil fuels needed to slow global warming. 

Biden and Xi met on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. Both committed Monday to directing their governments’ senior officials to “maintain communication and deepen constructive efforts” on matters including climate change and security of the world food supply, the White House said. 

John Kerry’s one-on-one relationship with his Chinese government counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, proved pivotal to striking the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord. Kerry was then secretary of state and is now Biden’s climate envoy. Persuading China to move much faster to cut its reliance on dirty-burning coal has been a main — and so far unrealized — effort of Kerry’s climate diplomacy under Biden.

Summer 2022: Torrential Rains, Extreme Heat Ravage China 

Like much of the rest of the world, China has experienced the extreme effects of climate change in late spring and early summer of 2022. These include heatwaves with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit and severe flooding in many areas. In response, Chinese authorities have stepped-up their efforts to reduce carbon emissions, but analysts say that these efforts fall far short of what is needed to substantial reduce these emissions. Below is a sampling of articles on these climate effects and China’s responses:

“China’s Record Drought Is Drying Rivers and Feeding Its Coal Habit: Dry weather in southwestern China has crippled huge hydroelectric dams, forcing cities to impose rolling blackouts and driving up the country’s use of coal,” Keith Bradsher and Joy Dong, N.Y. Times, Aug. 29, 2022

 In this article, Bradsher and Dong describe some of the horrendous consequences of China’s ongoing drought and heat wave, particularly as it affects hydroelectrical generation, manufacturing, transportation, and food production.

A record-setting drought and an 11-week heat wave are causing broad disruption in a region that depends on dams for more than three-quarters of its electricity generation. The factory shutdowns and logistical delays are hindering China’s efforts to revive its economy as the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, prepares to claim a third term in power this autumn. 

The heat wave has scorched China for more than two months, stretching from Sichuan in the southwest to the country’s eastern coast and sending the mercury above 104 degrees on many days. In Chongqing, a sprawling metropolis in the southwest with around 20 million people, the temperature soared to 113 degrees last week, the first time such a high reading had been recorded in a Chinese city outside the western desert region of Xinjiang. 

The drought has dried up dozens of rivers and reservoirs in the region and cut Sichuan’s hydropower generation capacity by half, hurting industrial production. Volkswagen closed its 6,000-employee factory in Chengdu for the past week and a half, and Toyota temporarily suspended operations at its assembly plant.

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“China heatwave and drought to continue, with power supply hit, shipping halted and crops at risk,” Echo Xie, South China Morning Post, August 20, 2022 

About half of China’s landmass is reeling under the most severe drought and longest sustained period of extreme high temperatures in six decades, with no respite seen for at least a week. “Over the past month, 4.5 million sq. km of the country had experienced temperatures of 35 degrees Celsius or more,” the National Meteorological Centre said on Friday. That is about half of China’s total land mass. 

Water levels in the nation’s longest river, the Yangtze, are at a record low, halting shipping over vast sections of the key waterway, while those at its biggest freshwater lake Poyang are down by 75 per cent, the lowest since records began in 1951.  

In the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing, home to more than 31 million people, as many as 66 rivers and 25 reservoirs have run out of water. Almost a million residents and 59,000 hectares of farmland across 34 counties have been affected. 

The extreme weather comes at a critical time for rice, soybean and other water-intensive crops ahead of the autumn harvest. “August is the heading and flowering time for rice,” Fang Fuping, a researcher at the China Rice Research Institute, told CCTV on Thursday. “At this time, the heat has the biggest impact and it has brought about extremely unfavorable effects.” 

Prolonged heat and reduced water reserves have triggered a power crunch as demand for cooling surges, shutting factories and sparking supply chain worries in the world’s largest manufacturing hub. 

Several provinces have imposed power restrictions across different industries. Sichuan ordered all factories to shut down for six days.“ The province’s hydropower generation capacity has fallen by more than 50 per cent,” an engineer with the State Grid Sichuan Electric Power Company said on the company website. Hydroelectric power accounts for about 80 per cent of Sichuan’s supply. 

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“China’s power crisis in Sichuan sparks widespread rationing amid ‘crazy hot’ conditions,” Ji Siqi, South China Morning Post, Aug. 15, 2022 

With severe drought conditions showing no sign of abating, power rationing is spreading beyond the regional industrial sector in China’s southwestern Sichuan province, curtailing residential power use and threatening energy supplies elsewhere in the country. 

Dazhou, a city of 5.4 million people in northeast Sichuan, announced rolling blackouts in its urban areas on Wednesday, affecting power to homes, offices and malls. “Since August 7, due to multiple factors such as the extreme high temperatures and tight power supplies in the whole province, there has been a large power-supply gap in the local power grid of the main urban area of Dazhou,” an August 16 notice from notice from state-owned Dazhou Electric Power Group stated. “The company has taken various measures such as ordering industrial users to stop production or to ration power, to alleviate the imbalance between power supply and demand. 

Sichuan has been bearing the brunt of the country’s power shortage this year amid severe heatwaves that have depleted the Yangtze River basin. The province relies on hydroelectric energy from dams for around 80 per cent of its electricity needs, but the drought means that water flows into hydropower reservoirs have dropped by between 30 and 50 per cent, year on year, local authorities said at a meeting on August 13.

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China endures summer of extreme weather as record rainfall and scorching heat wave cause havoc
Nectar Gan, CNN, July 20, 2022 

Scientists have been warning for years that the climate crisis would amplify extreme weather, making it deadlier and more frequent. Now, like much of the world, China is reeling from its impact. Since the country’s rainy season started in May, heavy rainstorms have brought severe flooding and landslides to large swathes of southern China, killing dozens of people, displacing millions and causing economic losses running into billions of yuan. 

In June, extreme rainfall broke “historical records” in coastal Fujian province, and parts of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces. At the same time, a heat wave began to envelop northern China, pushing temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit). 

That heat wave has now engulfed half the country, affecting more than 900 million people – or about 64% of the population. All but two northeastern provinces in China have issued high-temperature warnings, with 84 cities issuing their highest-level red alerts last Wednesday. 

The stifling heat has coincided with a surge in Covid cases, making government mandated mass testing all the more excruciating for residents – including the elderly – who must wait in long lines under the sun. It has also become a dangerous task for health workers who, as part of the government’s zero-Covid policy, are required to spend long hours outdoors covered head to toe in airtight PPE equipment as they administer the tests. Several videos of Covid workers collapsing on the ground from heatstroke have gone viral on social media. 

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Heat wave, flooding leave multiple people dead in China
AP, July 13, 2022 

Record-high temperatures have been reported in Zhejiang province, just east of the global business hub of Shanghai, topping out above 42 degrees Celsius (107 degrees Fahrenheit) on July 13. The neighboring coastal provinces of Jiangsu and Fujian were also suffering under high heat, while Henan, Sichuan and Heilongjiang further inland saw many hospitalized for heat stroke, with an as-yet unreported number of deaths. 

Floods have also struck much of the country, with three people reported killed and five missing in Sichuan province’s Pingwu county as of midday Wednesday. One person was reported dead and eight missing in Heilongjiang in the northeast. 

Experts say such extreme weather events are becoming more likely because of climate change. Warmer air can store more water, leading to bigger cloudbursts when it’s released. Hundreds of thousands in south-central China have already been displaced by flooding. The flooding adds to economic woes brought on partly by stringent “zero-COVID” measures restricting travel and disrupting supply chains.

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China’s summer floods and heat waves fuel plans for a changing climate
Christian Shepherd, Pei-Lin Wu, and Eva Dou, Washington Post, July 8, 2022 

Note: In this article, the authors summarize the damage being inflicted on China as a result of extreme climate events and survey China’s inadequate efforts to diminish the country’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels, especially coal. 

Environmentalists’ excitement over China’s pledge that its carbon dioxide emissions would peak before 2030 and that the country would reach “carbon neutrality” by 2060 has been undercut by Beijing’s failure to rapidly shift away from coal. 

For state planners, even a huge build-out of wind and solar power — China plans to install about the equivalent of the United States’ entire current capacity this year — will be unable to keep pace with energy demand in the near term. The top leadership has consistently reiterated in recent months that coal is, for now, the “mainstay” of the country’s power generation and will remain so for the near future…. 

When it comes to climate action, the Chinese Communist Party leadership faces a series of unattractive trade-offs. To force carbon-intensive industries to curb greenhouse gases quickly threatens to undermine an already fragile economy. But fail to transition toward sustainable growth in time and the effects of global warming could be far worse.

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Torrential rains kill dozens in southern China as climate change amplifies flood seasons
Nectar Gan and Shawn Deng, CNN, June 9, 2022 

According to CNN, Torrential rains in southern China have impacted millions of residents and caused billions of yuan in economic losses, as the country grapples with increasingly devastating flood seasons fueled by climate change. 

In recent weeks, heavy rainfall has triggered severe flooding and landslides in large swathes of southern China, damaging homes, crops and roads. In Guangxi province, landslides killed seven people on June 9, state news agency Xinhua reported. In Hunan province, 10 people have been killed this month and three remain missing, with 286,000 people evacuated and a total of 1.79 million residents affected, officials said at a news conference Wednesday. 

More than 2,700 houses have collapsed or suffered severe damage, and 96,160 hectares of crops have been destroyed – heavy losses for a province that serves as a major rice-producing hub for China. Direct economic losses are estimated at more than 4 billion yuan ($600 million), according to officials. 

Summer floods are a regular occurrence in China, especially in the densely populated agricultural areas along the Yangtze River and its tributaries. But scientists have been warning for years that the climate crisis would amplify extreme weather, making it deadlier and more frequent.

Working With China on Climate is ‘Most Important Element’ of the Decade, NSC Official Says
Jacqueline Feldsher, Defense One, Jan. 6, 2022

[In a virtual event hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Kurt Campbell, coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs at the National Security Council, said on Jan. 6 that while the U.S.-China relationship will be overwhelmingly ruled by competition, the two powers must cooperate in one area: fighting climate change. It’s critical, he said, for American officials to bring China in line with global efforts to cut emissions and end global warming.] 

“There are elements of our bilateral relationship and global politics that require a degree of constructive engagement between the United States and China… One of the most effective arenas of diplomacy is in the arena of climate,” Campbell said. “I think everyone recognizes that the most important element of the next 10 years is to bring China more into the global framework associated with climate.” 

[In his comments, Campbell also noted that cooperation with China means working with an authoritarian state whose bleak record on human rights includes the oppression of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. He said it’s important to approach the matter “with humility,” by recognizing that America’s record on both human rights and democracy is not perfect.] 

“Are we able to take the corrective steps to acknowledge our own shortcomings? It is through those practices in many respects that we animate and affect how other countries see us,” he said. “For me, it really is about our domestic example right now in the Indo-Pacific more than anything else.”

Opinion: Biden Thinks He Can Have It Both Ways on China. He’s Wrong.
By Peter Beinart, New York Times, Nov. 18, 2018 

[In this Opinion piece, N.Y. Times columnist Peter Beinart argues that President Biden cannot simultaneously promote increase cooperation with China on climate change and Covid while treating China as a hostile power, as the one cancels out the other. Arguing that cooperation on those issues is essential for U.S. security, Beinart calls for a more pragmatic, collaborative relationship with Beijing.] 

Mr. Biden is trying to have it both ways. His aides insist there’s no trade-off between treating China as an adversary and as a partner…. That’s wishful thinking; the two goals collide. And for all the recent talk of better relations between Washington and Beijing, the Biden administration is still not prioritizing cooperation — although it is only through far deeper cooperation that the United States can address what menaces Americans most. 

Take climate change, the single greatest long-term danger to life in the United States — and everywhere else. It should be the Biden administration’s top priority when it comes to China. But it’s not. Although the U.S. climate envoy, John Kerry, and his Chinese counterpart made headlines by signing a joint declaration on “enhancing climate action” this month in Glasgow, the document was weaker than a joint statement the two governments signed seven years earlier, before U.S.-China relations nose-dived. 

Many green technologies will advance faster if American and Chinese researchers collaborate. But the Biden administration has maintained Trump administration visa restrictions that prevent students who attended Chinese universities with military ties from doing graduate work in the United States — even if there’s no evidence those students ever worked for the Chinese military themselves…. And by depicting China as a threat, Mr. Biden justifies higher Pentagon budgets — which, given the U.S. military’s status as the world’s largest institutional producer of greenhouse gases, constitutes a climate disaster in and of itself. 

Pentagon says that climate crisis and China are 'equally important' threats to US
Gina Martinez, Daily Mail, Nov. 11, 2021

Department of Defense press secretary John Kirby told reporters on Nov. 10 that the current climate crisis is an equal priority to the Pentagon as the threat posed by China. 

When Kirby was asked whether China or climate change was a bigger threat to the U.S., Kirby said they both present challenges. “I think we get paid to examine all threats to our national security,” he said. “You have heard the secretary [Lloyd Austin] talk about the climate as a real and existential national security threat, and it is not just to the United States, but to countries all over the world.” 

“And we consider China as the number one pacing challenge for the department,” he continued, but added, “Both are equally important.”

US, China Surprise Climate Summit With Joint Declaration
By Henry Ridgwell, VOA, November 10, 2021 

The United States and China surprised the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow on Nov. 10 with a joint declaration to take action to limit global warming over the next decade. 

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry told reporters in Glasgow on Wednesday that the joint declaration builds on statements made by both countries in April. [See entry for April 17, 2021, below] 

“We also expressed a shared desire for success at this COP on mitigation, adaptation, support and, frankly, all of the key issues which will result in the world raising ambition and being able to address this crisis. Now, with this announcement, we've arrived at a new step, a road map for our present and future collaboration on this issue,” Kerry said at a press conference. 

“The United States and China have no shortage of differences, but on climate, cooperation is the only way to get this job done. This is not a discretionary thing, frankly. This is science. It's math and physics that dictate the road that we have to travel,” Kerry added. 

China’s chief climate negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, echoed those sentiments. “Climate change is a challenge, a common challenge, faced by humanity," Xie told reporters. "It bears on the well-being of future generations. Now, climate change is becoming increasingly urgent and severe, making it a future challenge into an existential crisis. In the area of climate change, there is more agreement between China and the U.S. than divergence, making it an area with huge potential for our cooperation. 

Among the joint pledges were cooperation on controlling methane emissions, tackling illegal deforestation, enhancing renewable energy generation and speeding up financial support for poorer nations. But the declaration did not include many specific dates or targets.

Opinion: Why we need a ‘long telegram’ about the climate crisis — not conflict with China or Russia
By Katrina vanden Heuvel, Washington Post, Nov. 9, 2021

[In this column, Nation magazine Katrina vanden Heuvel recalls George Kennan’s famous “long telegram” of the Cold War era outlining the strategy of containment of the USSR and calls for a new “long telegram” to lay out the strategy for engaging China and Russia in facing the growing climate threat.] 

To his credit, President Biden has insisted that climate be one of the security priorities of his administration, and his Build Back Better plan – even in its reduced state – contains the government’s largest climate investment ever. And yet, the administration has not begun the necessary rethinking – and reprioritizing – needed to address our most pressing national security challenge. 

The Biden White House’s first priority, as the Council on Foreign Relations’ Richard Haass noted, has been gearing up for the emerging great-power faceoff with China and Russia. In fact…climate change has already wreaked greater destruction, economic disruption, loss of life and property on Americans than anything threatened by China and Russia could do short of a major war. 

To help meet the security threats of climate change, the United States obviously needs to accelerate its own plans to reduce carbon emissions. But more is required. [A] major area of rethinking has to address the emerging face-off with China… The Biden administration argues that it can ratchet up pressure on China even while cooperating on climate concerns. Beijing, however, has made it clear that climate cannot be an “oasis” of cooperation in a desert of tensions. Michael Klare, defense correspondent for the Nation, concludes that “if the planet’s two ‘great’ powers refuse to cooperate in a meaningful way in tackling the climate threat, we’re done for.” 

The priority for the safety of Americans – and for the rest of the world – is that the two countries join in leading the world to address the growing climate crisis.

China Promises to Terminate Funding for Coal Projects Abroad But Increases Domestic Coal Consumption

Analysis by Michael Klare, Committee for a Sane U.S.-China Policy, Nov. 1, 2021 

On Sept. 21, 2021, in a video address to the UN General Assembly in New York, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to terminate Chinese funding for the construction of coal-fired power plants abroad as part of a larger commitment to climate change action.  

“We need to accelerate transition to a green and low-carbon economy and achieve green recovery and development,” he declared. “China will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy, and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad.”[1] 

China’s decision to cease funding coal projects abroad is considered significant as is the largest financier of coal-fired power plants around the world. According to Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center, China has poured $51.6 billion into the construction of coal-fired power plants abroad since 2000, with the largest amount, $9.3 billion, going to Indonesia, followed by Vietnam ($8.8 billion), India ($7.1 billion), Pakistan ($5.3 billion), and South Africa ($4.5 billion).[2] The exit of China as a leading financier of such plants could result in a significant slowdown in the expansion of coal consumption in these and other developing countries, as few other nations are prepared to lend money for the construction of coal plants.[3] 

But while China has taken an important step to eliminate its role in the expansion of coal use abroad, it has yet to take effective action to halt its own coal consumption. 

According to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, China is the world’s largest consumer of coal, responsible for 54.3% of global consumption in 2020. Also, at a time when much of the world is reducing its production and consumption of coal, China is one of the very few countries moving in the opposite direction. In 2020, BP reports, China was the only country to increase its domestic output of coal and, along with Malaysia, the only one to increase its consumption of coal.[4] 

Because coal is the most carbon-polluting of the fossil fuels, its increasing use by China means that its carbon dioxide emissions are rising at a time when scientists largely agree that CO2 emissions must be drastically reduced if the world is to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (or better yet, to 1.5 degrees Celsius) and thereby avoid climate disasters far more extreme than anything we’ve witnessed to date. 

In a video speech to the Leaders’ Summit on Climate on April 22, 2021, President Xi Jinping promised to rein in China’s reliance on coal and to halt China’s coal-plant construction by 2025 in order to curb the country’s carbon emissions. As he explained, “China will strictly control coal-fired power generation projects, and strictly limit the increase in coal consumption over the 14th Five-Year Plan period and phase it down in the 15th Five-Year Plan period.”[5] (China’s 14th Five-Year Plan period extends from 2021 to 2025; the 15th Five-Year Plan from 2026 to 2030.) 

This might lead observers to believe that Chinese leaders would be taking immediate steps to slow the country’s coal consumption and its construction of new coal plants, but the opposite appears to be the case, as China appears to be ramping up both. According to a February 2021 report by Global Energy Monitor, China now has now has 247 gigawatts (GW) of coal power under development (88 GW under construction and 159 GW proposed for construction), nearly six times Germany’s entire coal-fired capacity.[6] (A gigawatt is enough energy to power 750,000 homes.) 

Energy analysts offer two main reasons to explain China’s increase in coal consumption, despite President Xi’s pledge to curb such usage: a rush by municipal and provincial governments to complete pet projects before the door is shut on such endeavors; and an energy shortage caused by soaring-pandemic demand and government-financed stimulus projects. 

Large coal plants are usually constructed by local and regional governments in concert with giant state-owned firms and are often viewed as a boost to local economic health, as they provide cheap and abundant energy for factories, steel plants, and other major sources of income and employment. Fearing that the central government will impose increasingly strict limits on coal-plant construction in accordance with Xi’s April 22 promises, many of these local authorities are rushing to start construction of new plants over the next few years.[7] 

The drive to increase coal production has also been fueled by widespread energy shortages in many parts of China. As summer 2021 turned into fall, electricity supplies proved inadequate in heavily populated areas, causing blackouts in some places and forcing factories to suspend production. Analysts generally blamed the shortages on increased power demand caused by a post-pandemic rebound in economic activity and efforts by the central government to stimulate growth through energy-intensive investments in new railroads, highways, subways, and other forms of infrastructure. To address the energy crunch, government officials have reversed course on coal, pledging to increase rather than diminish national output. “We will make every effort to increase coal production and supply,” said Zhao Chenxin, the secretary general of the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planning agency, on Oct. 13.[8] 

China thus faces a powerful dilemma. It seeks to present itself as a leader in global efforts to slow the onslaught of climate change, but is unable to overcome its heavy reliance on coal – the leading source of climate-altering carbon emissions. If China genuinely seeks to exert leadership in the climate fight, it must take more extreme measures to curb its coal addition and move more swiftly in increasing its reliance on alternative sources of energy. 

Endnotes: 

1. China, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sept. 22, 2021, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1909172.shtml

2. China’s Global Energy Finance, http://www.bu.edu/cgef/#/all/EnergySource/Coal

3. “China Says It Won’t Build New Coal Plants Abroad. What Does That Mean?” New York Times, Sept. 22, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/22/world/asia/china-coal.html

4. BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2021, https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2021-full-report.pdf

5. Xinhua, April 22, 2021, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-04/22/c_139899289.htm

6. “China Dominates 2020 Coal Plant Development,” https://globalenergymonitor.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/China-Dominates-2020-Coal-Development.pdf

7. “The Rock Standing in the Way of China’s Climate Ambitions: Coal,” New York Times, Sept. 22, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/world/asia/china-coal-politics.html

8. “China’s Power Problems Expose a Strategic Weakness,” New York Times, Oct. 13, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/business/china-electricity-shortage.html

Wang Yi meets with U.S. President's special envoy on climate issues [John] Kerry
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sept. 1, 2021

[NOTE: This is an English translation of an official Chinese account of a video conversation between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and John Kerry, President Biden’s epical envoy for international climate change cooperation on Sept. 1, 2021, while Kerry was in China for meetings with his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua.]

Wang Yi said that as two major countries, cooperation between China and the United States is the only correct choice, and it is also the ardent expectation of the international community. China and the United States have carried out fruitful dialogues and cooperation on important international and regional issues such as bilateral spheres and climate change, bringing tangible benefits to the two countries and their peoples.

Wang Yi said that in recent years, Sino-US relations have undergone a sharp decline, a sharp decline, and serious difficulties. The reason is that the US has made a major strategic misjudgment against China…. Now that the ball is on the US side, the US should stop treating China as a threat and adversary, and stop beating and suppressing China all over the world…. We should carry out bilateral, regional and global coordination and cooperation based on the principles of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit.

Wang Yi said that Sino-US climate change cooperation not only conforms to the interests of both parties, but also benefits all mankind and has broad prospects for development. The United States hopes to transform [climate] cooperation into an "oasis" in Sino-US relations, but if the "oasis" is surrounded by "deserts," the "oasis" will sooner or later be desertified. The Sino-US climate change cooperation cannot be separated from the general environment of Sino-US relations. The United States should meet China halfway and take positive actions to push Sino-US relations back on track.

Kerry said that US-China cooperation is crucial to the current urgent climate change challenge. The United States is willing to respect each other with China, strengthen communication and dialogue, jointly raise ambitions, reflect the leadership of both sides, set a model for the implementation of the goals of the Paris Agreement, and create opportunities for solving the problems faced by the US-China relationship. 

For news analysis of Kerry’s meetings with Chinese officials, see the following: 

China drives John Kerry talks beyond climate change to US relations
Catherine Wong, South China Morning Post, Sept. 2, 2021 

US climate envoy John Kerry’s visit to China has gone beyond discussions about global warming, with Beijing making clear it expects broader efforts to improve the two nations’ overall relations. 

Kerry held talks on Thursday with Vice-Premier Han Zheng and later with China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, via videoconference.  

Yang told Kerry that Beijing was open to dialogue and cooperation but that Washington should correct its “wrong policies” on China, according to the Chinese foreign ministry readout. He said the two sides could “intensify communication, coordination and cooperation on climate change, pandemic control and economic recovery among a wide range of … major global and regional issues” but cooperation “should be two-way and mutually beneficial.”

Shanghai leads way in China’s carbon transition
Shi Yi, China Dialogue, June 23, 2021 

NOTE: In this article, Shi Yi, a senior researcher at China Dialogue, describes the steps Shanghai is taking to reduce its carbon footprint and increase its reliance on renewable energy. “Many Chinese cities and provinces are working on plans to hit peak carbon before 2030,” she writes, but “Shanghai, China’s most developed city, is set to lead the way.” China Dialogue is an independent, non-profit organization based in the UK that’s dedicated to promoting a common understanding of China’s environmental challenges. Here are excerpts from a detailed account of Shanghai’s efforts to reduce its carbon emissions…. 

Last September, China committed to peak carbon by 2030, and carbon neutrality by 2060. To this end, the central government is encouraging local governments to hit peak carbon early where possible, with local action plans for reaching peak carbon due at the end of the year. 

The Energy Foundation China’s analysis found Shanghai’s emissions from energy activities have already peaked. That matches up with findings from Peking University’s Institute of Energy. But modelling by other academics has found that if Shanghai’s existing policies are enforced, the city’s carbon emissions will plateau between 2018 and 2024, and only then start to fall. If energy structure and intensity targets are tightened up, that fall could be brought forward to 2022. 

Coal still accounted for 31% of Shanghai’s energy consumption in 2020, and the energy mix needs more work if the city is to hit peak carbon. The city has published a range of documents over the last few years indicating it will end its reliance on coal, with a cap on coal consumption. Meanwhile, the city is also working to replace local coal power generation with renewable generation located elsewhere in China, and to increase the use of natural gas. Shanghai already imports about half of its electricity, drawing on renewables in western China, such as hydropower, which help cut the city’s carbon emissions.

Shanghai is known in China for its efficient public transport system. It has over 1,000 kilometers of subway lines either in operation or in the works, with links to the neighboring provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang planned. The city government has repeatedly said the only solution to congestion issues is to prioritize the development of public transport. In 2016, the city put forward a “15-minute city” plan, with the aim of having 99% of communities able to access the bulk of their shopping, leisure and transportation transfer points within a 15-minute walk by 2035.

U.S.-China Joint Statement Addressing the Climate Crisis
U.S. Dept. of State, April 17, 2021

U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry and China Special Envoy for Climate Change Xie Zhenhua met in Shanghai on April 15 and 16, 2021, to discuss aspects of the climate crisis. At the conclusion of the discussion, the two Special Envoys released the following joint statement. 

1. The United States and China are committed to cooperating with each other and with other countries to tackle the climate crisis, which must be addressed with the seriousness and urgency that it demands. This includes both enhancing their respective actions and cooperating in multilateral processes, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement. Both countries recall their historic contribution to the development, adoption, signature, and entry into force of the Paris Agreement through their leadership and collaboration.

2.  Moving forward, the United States and China are firmly committed to working together and with other Parties to strengthen implementation of the Paris Agreement. The two sides recall the Agreement’s aim in accordance with Article 2 to hold the global average temperature increase to well below 2 degrees C and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees C. In that regard, they are committed to pursuing such efforts, including by taking enhanced climate actions that raise ambition in the 2020s in the context of the Paris Agreement with the aim of keeping the above temperature limit within reach and cooperating to identify and address related challenges and opportunities.

3.  Both countries look forward to the US-hosted Leaders Summit on Climate on April 22/23. They share the Summit’s goal of raising global climate ambition on mitigation, adaptation, and support on the road to COP 26 in Glasgow.

4.  The United States and China will take other actions in the short term to further contribute to addressing the climate crisis:

• a. Both countries intend to develop by COP 26 in Glasgow their respective long-term strategies aimed at net zero GHG emissions/carbon neutrality.

• b. Both countries intend to take appropriate actions to maximize international investment and finance in support of the transition from carbon-intensive fossil fuel based energy to green, low-carbon and renewable energy in developing countries.

• c. They will each implement the phasedown of hydrofluorocarbon production and consumption reflected in the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol.

  5.  The United States and China will continue to discuss, both on the road to COP 26 and beyond, concrete actions in the 2020s to reduce emissions aimed at keeping the Paris Agreement-aligned temperature limit within reach, including: 

• a. Policies, measures, and technologies to decarbonize industry and power, including through circular economy, energy storage and grid reliability, CCUS, and green hydrogen;

• b. Increased deployment of renewable energy;

• c. Green and climate resilient agriculture;

• d. Energy efficient buildings;

• e. Green, low-carbon transportation;

• f. Cooperation on addressing emissions of methane and other non-CO2 greenhouse gases;

• g. Cooperation on addressing emissions from international civil aviation and maritime activities; and

• h. Other near-term policies and measures, including with respect to reducing emissions from coal, oil, and gas 

6.  The two sides will cooperate to promote a successful COP 26 in Glasgow, aiming to complete the implementation arrangements for the Paris Agreement (e.g., under Article 6 and Article 13) and to significantly advance global climate ambition on mitigation, adaptation, and support. They will further cooperate to promote a successful COP 15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Kunming, noting the importance of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, including its relevance to climate mitigation and adaptation. 

Climate Change Adaptation as a Competitive Struggle between the U.S. and China: Rather than prioritize collaboration between the U.S. and China in overcoming the perils of climate change, the Biden Administration appears to view climate change adaptation as a competitive struggle. In this article, Nike Ching quotes Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the effect that the U.S. is falling behind China in green technology and must step up its competitive efforts in this field — an approach challenged by Committee Co-Founder Michael Klare

U.S. Reaffirms Climate Issue as Foreign Policy Priority Ahead of Earth Day Summit
Nike Ching, VOA News, April 19, 2021

Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that the U.S. lags China in developing renewable energy innovations during a speech at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in Annapolis, MD on April 19.  

“Right now, we’re falling behind. China is the largest producer and exporter of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and electric vehicles. It holds nearly a third of the world’s renewable energy patents,” Blinken said. “It's difficult to imagine the United States winning the long-term strategic competition with China if we cannot lead the renewable energy revolution.” 

Washington says it is prepared to work with Beijing on the climate issue, even as the U.S. confronts China over other pressing issues such as Beijing’s clampdowns in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, military operations against Taiwan and in the South China Sea, as well as China’s economic coercion of U.S. allies. 

Other analysts argue that cooperation between the world’s two largest emitters can be done in parallel without weakening the U.S. negotiating position on other critical matters, and that keeping communication channels open is crucial despite existing tensions. 

"We need great power solidarity in fighting climate change, not great power competition and conflict," said Michael Klare [Co-Founder of the Committee for a Sane U.S.-China Policy]. We need China's help in speeding the green technology transition in the developing world,” added Klare, who described climate change as a greater national security threat than other issues.

An Alliance for Survival: Biden, Climate Change, and China

By Michael T. Klare, Co-Founder, Committee for a Sane U.S.-China Policy (March 2021)

Slowing the pace of climate change and getting “tough” on China, especially over its human-rights abuses and unfair trade practices, are among the top priorities President Biden has announced for his new administration. Evidently, he believes that he can tame a rising China with harsh pressure tactics, while still gaining its cooperation in areas of concern to Washington. As he wrote in Foreign Affairs during the presidential election campaign, “The most effective way to meet that challenge is to build a united front of U.S. allies and partners to confront China’s abusive behaviors and human rights violations, even as we seek to cooperate with Beijing on issues where our interests converge, such as climate change.”[1] If, however, our Biden truly believes that he can build an international coalition to gang up on China and secure Beijing’s cooperation on climate change, he is seriously deluded. Indeed, though he could succeed in provoking a new cold war, he won’t prevent the planet from heating up unbearably in the process.   

President Biden is certainly aware of the dangers of global warming. In that same Foreign Affairs article, he labeled it nothing short of an “existential threat,” one that imperils the survival of human civilization. Acknowledging the importance of relying on scientific expertise (unlike our previous president, who repeatedly invented his own version of scientific reality), Biden affirmed the conclusion of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that warming must be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels or the planet will experience calamitous, irreversible consequences. He then pledged to “rejoin the Paris climate agreement on day one of a Biden administration” (which he indeed did on his first day in office) and to “make massive, urgent investments at home that put the United States on track to have a clean energy economy with net-zero [greenhouse gas] emissions by 2050” – the target set by the IPCC. 

Even such dramatic actions, he indicated, will not be sufficient.  Other countries will have to join America in moving toward a global “net-zero” state in which any carbon emissions would be compensated for by equivalent carbon removals. “Because the United States creates only 15 percent of global emissions,” he wrote, “I will leverage our economic and moral authority to push the world to determined action, rallying nations to raise their ambitions and push progress further and faster.”[2] 

China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases right now (although the U.S. remains number one historically[3]), would obviously be Washington’s natural partner in this effort. Here, though, Biden’s antagonistic stance toward that country is likely to prove a significant impediment. Rather than prioritize cooperation with China on climate action, he chose to castigate Beijing for its continued reliance on coal and support for coal projects in other countries. The Biden climate plan, he wrote in Foreign Affairs, “includes insisting that China… stop subsidizing coal exports and outsourcing pollution to other countries by financing billions of dollars’ worth of dirty fossil-fuel energy projects through its Belt and Road Initiative.” Then he went further, by portraying the global effort to achieve a green economy as a potentially competitive, not collaborative, struggle with China, saying, 

            “I will make investment in research and development a cornerstone of my presidency, so that the United States is leading the charge in innovation. There is no reason we should be falling behind China or anyone else when it comes to clean energy.”

Certainly, it might be useful to highlight the areas in which China has taken the lead in clean energy – for example, in its drive to master the technology of electric cars – to spur catch-up efforts in this country. But if climate change is an existential threat requiring maximum international effort to overcome, depicting this vital endeavor as a competitive race with winners and losers and picking fights with China over its energy behavior is a self-defeating way to start.  

Whatever obstacles China does pose, its cooperation in achieving that 1.5-degree limit is critical. “If we don’t get this right, nothing else will matter,” Biden said of global efforts to deal with climate change.[4] Sadly, his insistence on pummeling China on so many fronts will ensure that he gets it wrong.  The only way to avert catastrophic climate change is for the United States to avoid a new cold war with China by devising a cooperative set of plans with Beijing to speed the global transition to a green economy. 

Why Cooperation Is Essential 

With such cooperation in mind, let’s review the basics on how those two countries affect world energy consumption and global carbon emissions: The United States and China are the world’s two leading consumers of energy and its two main emitters of carbon dioxide, or CO2, the leading greenhouse gas. As a result, they exert an outsized influence on the global climate equation. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), China accounted for approximately 22% of world energy consumption in 2018; the U.S., 16%. And because both countries rely so heavily on fossil fuels for energy generation – China largely on coal, the U.S. more on oil and natural gas – their carbon-dioxide emissions account for an even larger share of the global total: China alone, nearly 29% in 2018; the U.S., 18%; and combined, an astonishing 46% [5].

It’s what will happen in the future, though, that really matters. If the world is to keep global temperatures from rising above that 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold, every major economy should soon be on a downward-trending trajectory in terms of both fossil-fuel consumption and CO2 emissions (along with a compensating increase in renewable energy output). Horrifyingly enough, however, on their current trajectories, over the next two decades the combined fossil-fuel consumption and carbon emissions of China and the United States are still expected to rise, not fall, before stabilizing in the 2040s at a level far above net zero. According to the IEA, if the two countries remain on their current energy-use trajectories, their combined fossil-fuel consumption would be approximately 17% higher in 2040 than in 2018, even if their CO2 emissions would rise by only 3% (reflecting a greater reliance on natural gas as opposed to coal).[6]  Any increase of that kind over the next two decades would spell one simple word for humanity: doom. 

True, both countries are expected to substantially increase their investment in renewable energy during the next 20 years, even as places like India are expected to account for an ever-increasing share of global energy use and CO2 emissions. Still, as long as Beijing and Washington continue to lead the world in both categories, any effort to achieve net-zero and avert an almost unimaginable climate cataclysm will have to fall largely on their shoulders. This would, however, require a colossal reduction in fossil-fuel consumption and the ramping up of renewables on a scale unlike any engineering project this planet has ever seen.

The Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development at Tsinghua University, an influential Chinese think tank, has calculated what might be involved in reshaping China’s coal-dependent electrical power system to reach the goal of a 1.5-degree limit on global warming. Its researchers believe that, over the next three decades, this would require adding the equivalent of three times current global wind power capacity and four times that of solar power at the cost of approximately $20 trillion.[7] 

A similar transformation will be required in the United States, although with some differences: while this country relies far less on coal than China to generate electricity, it relies more on natural gas (a less potent emitter of CO2, but a fossil fuel nonetheless) and its electrical grid – as that catastrophic February 2021 storm demonstrated – is woefully unprepared for climate change and will have to be substantially rebuilt at enormous cost.[8] 

And that represents only part of what needs to be done to avert planetary catastrophe. To eliminate carbon emissions from oil-powered vehicles, both countries will have to replace their entire fleets of cars, vans, trucks, and buses with electric-powered ones and develop alternative fuels for their trains, planes, and ships – an undertaking of equal magnitude and expense. 

There are two ways all of this can be done: separately or together. Each country could devise its own blueprint for such a transition, developing its own green technologies and seeking financing wherever it could be found. As in the fight over fifth generation (5G) telecommunications, each could deny scientific knowledge and technical know-how to its rival and insist that allies buy only its equipment, whether or not it best suits their purposes — a stance taken by the Trump administration with respect to the Chinese company Huawei’s 5G wireless technology.[9]  

Alternatively, the U.S. and China could cooperate in developing green technologies, share information and know-how, and work together in disseminating them around the world. On the question of which approach is more likely to achieve success, the answer is too obvious to belabor. Only those prepared to risk civilization’s survival would choose the former – and yet that’s the choice that both sides may indeed make. 

Why a New Cold War Precludes Climate Salvation 

Those in Washington who favor a tougher approach toward China and the bolstering of U.S. military forces in the Pacific claim that, under President Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist regime has become more authoritarian at home and more aggressive abroad, endangering key U.S. allies in the Pacific and threatening our vital interests.[10] Certainly, when it comes to the increasing repression of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang Province or pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, there can be little doubt of Beijing’s perfidy, though on other issues, there’s room for debate. On another subject, though, there really should be no room for debate at all: the impact of a new cold war between the planet’s two great powers on the chances for a successful global response to a rapidly warming planet. 

There are several obvious reasons for this. First, increased hostility will ensure a competitive rather than collaborative search for vital solutions, resulting in wasted resources, inadequate financing, duplicative research, and the stalled international dissemination of advanced green technologies. A hint of such a future lies in the competitive rather than collaborative development of vaccines for Covid-19 and their distressingly chaotic distribution to Africa and the rest of the developing world, ensuring that the pandemic will have a life into 2022 or 2023 with an ever-rising death toll.[11] 

Second, a new cold war will make international diplomacy more difficult when it comes to ensuring worldwide compliance with the Paris climate agreement. Consider it a key lesson for the future that cooperation between President Barack Obama and Xi Jinping made the agreement possible in the first place, creating pressure on reluctant but vital powers like India and Russia to join as well.[12] Once President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement, that space evaporated and global adherence withered. Only by recreating such a U.S.-China climate alliance will it be possible to corral other key players into full compliance. As suggested recently by Todd Stern, the lead American negotiator at the 2015 Paris climate summit, “There is simply no way to contain climate change worldwide without full-throttle engagement by both countries.”[13] A cold war environment would make such cooperation a fantasy. 

Third, such an atmosphere would ensure a massive increase in military expenditures on both sides, sopping up funds needed for the transition to a green-energy economy. In addition, as the pace of militarization accelerated, fossil-fuel use would undoubtedly increase, as the governments of both countries favored the mass production of gas-guzzling tanks, bombers, and warships. 

Finally, there is no reason to assume a cold war will always remain cold. The current standoff between the U.S. and China in the Pacific is different from the one that existed between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in Europe during the historic Cold War. There is no longer anything like an “Iron Curtain” to define the boundaries between the two sides or keep their military forces from colliding with each another. While the risk of war in Europe was ever-present back then, each side knew that such a boundary-crossing assault might trigger a nuclear exchange and so prove suicidal.  

Today, however, the air and naval forces of China and the U.S. are constantly intermingling in the East and South China Seas, making a clash or collision possible at any time.[14] So far, cooler heads have prevailed, preventing such encounters from sparking armed violence, but as tensions mount, a hot war between the U.S. and China cannot be ruled out. And because American forces are poised to strike at vital targets on the Chinese mainland, it’s impossible to preclude China’s use of nuclear weapons or, if preparations for such use are detected, a preemptive U.S. nuclear strike.[15]

Any full-scale thermonuclear conflagration resulting from that would probably cause a nuclear winter and the death of billions of people, making the climate-change peril moot.[16] But even if nuclear weapons are not employed, a war between the two powers could result in immense destruction in China’s industrial heartland and to such key U.S. allies as Japan and South Korea. Fires ignited in the course of battle would, of course, add additional carbon to the atmosphere, while the subsequent breakdown in global economic activity would postpone by years any transition to a green economy. 

An Alliance for Global Survival 

If Joe Biden genuinely believes that climate change is an “existential threat” and that the United States “must lead the world,” it’s crucial that he stop the slide toward a new cold war with China and start working with Beijing to speed the transition to a green-energy economy focused on ensuring global compliance with the Paris climate agreement. This would not necessarily mean abandoning all efforts to pressure China on human rights and other contentious issues. It’s possible to pursue human rights, trade equity, and planetary survival at the same time. Indeed, as both countries come to share the urgency of addressing the climate crisis, progress on other issues could become easier. 

Assuming Biden truly means what he says about overcoming the climate threat and “getting it right,” here are some of the steps he could take to achieve meaningful progress: 

* Schedule a “climate summit” with Xi Jinping as soon as possible to discuss joint efforts to overcome global warming, including the initiation of bilateral programs to speed advances in areas like the spread of electric vehicles, the improvement of battery-storage capabilities, the creation of enhanced methods of carbon sequestration, and the development of alternative aviation fuels. 

* At the conclusion of the summit, joint working groups on these and other matters should be established, made up of senior figures from both sides. Research centers and universities in each country should be designated as lead actors in key areas, with arrangements made for cooperative partnerships and the sharing of climate-related technical data. 

* At the same time, presidents Biden and Xi should announce the establishment of an “Alliance for Global Survival,” intended to mobilize international support for the Paris climate agreement and strict adherence to its tenets. As part of this effort, the two leaders should plan joint meetings with other world leaders to persuade them to replicate the measures that Biden and Xi have agreed to work on cooperatively. As needed, they could offer to provide financial aid and technical assistance to poorer states to launch the necessary energy transition. 

* Presidents Biden and Xi should agree to reconvene annually to review progress in all these areas and designate surrogates to meet on a more regular basis. Both countries should publish an online “dashboard” exhibiting progress in every key area of climate mitigation. 

So, Mr. Biden, if you really meant what you said about overcoming climate change, these are some of the things you should focus on to get it right. Choose this path and guarantee us all a fighting chance to avert civilizational collapse. Choose the path of confrontation instead – the one your administration already appears headed down – and that hope is likely to disappear into an unbearable world of burning, flooding, famine, and extreme storms until the end of time.  

Copyright 2021 Michael T. Klare

Endnotes:

1. Joseph R. Biden Jr., “Why America Must Lead Again: Rescuing U.S. Foreign Policy After Trump,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2021, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-01-23/why-america-must-lead-again.

2. Ibid.

3. Justin Gillis and Nadja Popovich, “The U.S. Is the Biggest Carbon Polluter in History. It Just Walked Away from the Paris Climate Deal.,” New York Times, June 1, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/01/climate/us-biggest-carbon-polluter-in-history-will-it-walk-away-from-the-paris-climate-deal.html.

4. Biden, “Why America Must Lead Again.”

5. International Energy Agency (IEA), World Energy Outlook 2019 (Paris: IEA, 2019), Table 1.2, p. 40, and Table A.3, pp. 688, 732.

6. Ibid, Table A.3, pp. 687, 731.

7. See Christian Shepherd, Emma Zhou, and Katrina Manson, “Climate change: China’s coal addiction clashes with Xi’s bold promise,” Financial Times, Nov. 3, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/9656e36c-ba59-43e9-bf1c-c0f105813436.

8. Brad Plumer, “A Glimpse of America’s Future: Climate Change Means Trouble for Power Grids,” New York Times, Feb. 16, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/climate/texas-power-grid-failures.html.

9. See David E. Sanger, Julian E. Barnes, Raymond Zhong, and Marc Santora, “In 5G Race With China, U.S. Pushes Allies to Fight Huawei,” New York Times, Jan. 26, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/26/us/politics/huawei-china-us-5g-technology.html.

10. See Matthew Lee, “At Nixon library, Pompeo declares China engagement a failure,” July 23, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/at-nixon-library-pompeo-declares-china-engagement-a-failure/2020/07/23/c4b073f2-cd29-11ea-99b0-8426e26d203b_story.html.

11. Danil Bochkov, “Great Power Competition and the COVID-19 Vaccine Race,” The Diplomat, Jan. 29, 2021, https://thediplomat.com/2021/01/great-power-competition-and-the-covid-19-vaccine-race/.

12. Tom Phillips, Fiona Harvey, and Alan Yuhas, “Breakthrough as US and China agree to ratify Paris climate deal,” The Guardian, Sept. 3, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/03/breakthrough-us-china-agree-ratify-paris-climate-change-deal.

13. Todd Stern, “Can the United States and China reboot their climate cooperation?” Brookings Institution, Sept. 14, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/can-the-united-states-and-china-reboot-their-climate-cooperation/.

14. Zhou Bo, “The risk of China-US military conflict is worryingly high,” Financial Times, Aug. 25, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/0f423616-d9f2-4ca6-8d3b-a04d467ed6f8.

15. See Michael T. Klare, “An ‘Arms Race in Speed’: Hypersonic Weapons and the Changing Calculus of Battle,” Arms Control Today, June 2019, https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2019-06/features/arms-race-speed-hypersonic-weapons-changing-calculus-battle.

16. Sarah Derouin, “Nuclear Winter May Bring a Decade of Destruction,” Eos, Sept. 27, 2019, https://eos.org/articles/nuclear-winter-may-bring-a-decade-of-destruction.

Can the United States and China reboot their climate cooperation?

By Todd Stern, Brookings Institution, Sept. 14, 2020

In this article, Todd Stern, the chief U.S. negotiator at the Paris Climate Summit of December 2015, argues for the importance of maintaining a balanced relationship with China, condemning human rights abuses and other provocations where appropriate but also finding ways to cooperate on matters of common concern, such as climate change. This is the only way, he argues, that it will be possible to move ahead on climate change action internationally.

Unless we can get this mix of competition and collaboration right, renewed climate cooperation won’t get off the ground. And that would have grave national security consequences in the United States and around the world. You have only to look at the authoritative reports on the enormity of the climate risk, including the “1.5°C Report” of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2018, among others; or the warnings from institutions like the Pentagon and the intelligence community; or the crescendo of monumental climate events around the world, from wildfires in Australia and California to heat waves, floods, storms, and rapidly melting ice at our poles to see that what many once regarded as an environmental concern is in fact a full-fledged national security threat.

To date, China’s record on the transition to clean energy is mixed. It is by far the world leader in the deployment of solar and wind power. In 2019, more electric vehicles were sold in China than the rest of the world combined, and 98% of the world’s 500,000 electric buses operate in China. The Chinese government has put in place a wide range of policies to propel these rapid advances, and insiders there claim that China is committed to a renewable energy future.[3] At the same time, China’s coal infrastructure is immense and still growing. Although its coal consumption in 2019 fell as a percentage of primary energy (down to around 58%), it still consumed more coal than the rest of the world combined. Even more concerning, China is actively developing major coal projects both at home and abroad. With a current coal-fired power plant capacity of around 1040 gigawatts (GW) — about equivalent to the entire U.S. electricity system — China has roughly another 100 GW under construction and a further 150 GW on the drawing board (think of 1 GW as two full-scale, 500-megawatt power plants).[4] Moreover, studies indicate Chinese support (development, construction, and financing) for more than 100 GW of coal plants under construction around the world along the massive Belt and Road Initiative.[5]

The magnitude of China’s embedded coal infrastructure might lead one to believe that change at the speed and scale required is just undoable. But that isn’t so. As an example, two expert analyses in the past year suggest that it would be technically and economically feasible for China to largely phase out its coal infrastructure by 2050, assuming they stop adding to their fleet.[7] This would take tremendous effort, to be sure, but of course that’s the point. To take a global energy system that relies on fossil fuels for around 80% of primary energy down to net-zero by approximately 2050, a fundamental transformation at speed and scale will be required, including by China, the United States, Europe, and others. Nobody would even contemplate such a rapid transformation were it not that a more relaxed path threatens grave danger to our economic and national security and general well-being, if not outright catastrophe.

If Biden wins the U.S. presidency in November, his administration will need to send the right signals early on to reboot climate cooperation with China. First, it will need to convey its determination to meet China in the middle to arrest the downward slide in the broader bilateral relationship and find a new modus vivendi, with climate change identified as a key area for cooperation. Second, it will need to develop a set of strong policies demonstrating its commitment to transformational change. When Obama was seen to “walk the walk” at home on climate, especially in his second term, it translated directly into international leverage. This will be no less true for Biden. The Chinese know he has made big promises on the campaign trail and will want to see whether he can deliver. Third, Biden will need to make clear that climate change will be an organizing principle of his national security strategy, not simply an issue to which his national security team gives occasional lip service.

Endnotes:

3. David Sandalow, “China’s Response to Climate Change: A Study in Contrasts and a Policy at a Crossroads,” The Asia Society, July 30, 2020, https://asiasociety.org/policy-institute/chinas-response-climate-change-study-contrasts-and-policy-crossroads.

4. “A New Coal Boom in China: New Coal Plant Permitting and Proposals Accelerate,” Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, June 2020, https://globalenergymonitor.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/A-New-Coal-Boom-in-China_English.pdf.

5. Sandalow, “China’s Response to Climate Change.”

7. Fredrich Kahrl, Jiang Lin, Xu Liu, and Junfeng Hu, “Working Paper 007: Sunsetting Coal Power in China,” (Berkeley, CA: Energy Technologies Area, Berkeley Lab, September 2019), https://eta.lbl.gov/publications/working-paper-007-sunsetting-coal.