Biden’s Top Climate Negotiator to Visit China This Week
John Podesta, President Biden’s top climate diplomat, is traveling to Beijing on Tuesday where he is expected to press Chinese leaders to make more ambitious plans to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change. The three-day trip, confirmed by the State Department, is widely viewed as one of the last opportunities before the November election for the Biden administration to exert pressure on China to act more aggressively on global warming. “There is a stalemate on climate engagement between the U.S. and China,” said Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “We don’t have a lot of time to really change that.” Mr. Podesta plans to talk with his counterpart, Liu Zhenmin, as well as with ministers who oversee China’s coal development and renewable energy production. He is also expected to meet with Xie Zhenhua, a retired senior climate envoy who remains involved in diplomacy. Climate experts said they hoped the trip would help pave the way for climate to get space on the agenda if Mr. Biden and President Xi Jinping of China meet during the Group of 20 summit talks in November. The trip will be Mr. Podesta’s first visit to China since he took the role of chief United States climate negotiator after John Kerry resigned from the position this year. The Group of 20 meeting will be held on Nov. 18 and 19 in Brazil, about two weeks after the U.S. presidential election. That is also the same week that climate diplomats will be gathering in Baku, Azerbaijan, for an annual round of United Nations-led negotiations on global warming. Two major issues will be on the table in Baku: money and new climate targets. The U.S.-China relationship could be key to both. By early next year, the 195 countries that signed the 2015 Paris agreement must announce a new set of climate targets, detailing how far their nations will go toward cutting emissions through 2035. China is the world’s biggest source of greenhouse gasses, generating nearly one-third of global emissions. It also is responsible for about 90 percent of the growth in climate pollution since the Paris Agreement. That means the next target China adopts will overwhelmingly determine whether the planet is able to stay at relatively safe levels of warming or whether global average temperatures bust through the limit agreed upon in the Paris accord of 1.5 degrees Celsius rise over preindustrial levels. The Earth has already heated by an average of 1.2 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial times. As part of the Paris Agreement, China promised that its emissions would peak by 2030 and then eventually come down. China’s emissions may have already peaked. One key question going forward is how long China’s emissions should be allowed to plateau before they drop. Another is how steep the cut would be. “China will meet its original Paris goals ahead of schedule,” said Joanna Lewis, a China specialist at Georgetown University. Therefore, she said, “it is going to be really important for China to demonstrate a more ambitious set of goals this time around.” The Asia Society, a nonprofit group, found that, to help keep warming to 1.5 degrees, China must cut emissions across its entire economy at least 30 percent from current levels by 2035. Republicans have been critical of the Biden administration’s efforts to work with China. Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he was skeptical that Mr. Podesta’s trip would yield results. But he also said he believed China must take action. “The Biden-Harris administration should not give away the farm simply to get Chairman Xi to comply with agreements they have already signed,” Mr. McCaul said in a emailed statement, adding, “Chairman Xi cares about himself and his own power — not the rest of the world or our climate.” Other agenda items in Beijing will most likely include the energy transition away from coal and strengthening China’s plans to cut potent, noncarbon greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide. The biggest task at the upcoming U.N. climate talks will be agreeing to a new funding target to help poor countries cope with climate change. It will replace a current commitment from wealthy nations to mobilize $100 billion annually in climate finance to developing countries. The United States wants to ensure that whatever figure is agreed upon, countries that the United Nations
Corrections were made on Sept. 3, 2024: Because of a dropped word, an earlier version of this article stated incorrectly the financing commitment made by wealthy nations to support developing countries. It is $100 billion annually, not $100 annually. An earlier version of this article misattributed a quotation about the state of climate diplomacy. It was Li Shuo, not Alan Yu, who said, “There is a stalemate on climate engagement between the U.S. and China.”
