US climate envoy John Kerry was holding talks on Monday with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing as the US seeks to restore contacts amid disputes over trade, Taiwan, human rights and territorial claims. China’s official Xinhua News Agency said Kerry was meeting Monday with Xie Zhenhua for the first extensive face-to-face climate discussions between representatives of the world’s two worst climate polluters after a nearly yearlong hiatus.
China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal and has proceeded with building new plants, while at the same time forging ahead with renewables such as solar and wind power.
Yet, Congressional Republicans questioning of Kerry ahead of his trip at times broke down into challenging the existence of the scientifically established fact of climate change. But with Republicans as well as Democrats overall accepting the science underlying the warming climate, much of the criticism from GOP committee members zeroed in on the appropriateness of the US engaging in climate negotiations with China.
China has pledged to level-off carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060. The US and the European Union have urged China to adopt more ambitious reduction targets. Kerry is expected to push for a reduction in China’s reliance on coal and setting targets on methane that, along with carbon dioxide, is a main contributor to the earth’s warming climate.
As with the US and Europe, China has seen record stretches of high temperatures that have threatened crops and prompted cities to open Cold War-era bomb shelters to help residents escape the heat. US lawmakers faulted China for refusing to make bigger cuts in climate-damaging fossil fuel emissions and the country’s insistence that it was still a developing economy and should not be held to the same climate standards as developed Western economies.
Kerry responded that the clear disparity between China’s claims and the size of its economy as the world’s second largest could not be allowed to deadlock global progress on cutting emissions. He also ruled out the likelihood of persuading China to hold itself to the same emissions-cutting requirements facing other big economies, at least on this visit.
Kerry is the third senior Biden administration official in recent weeks to travel to China for meetings with their counterparts there, after Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. China broke off some mid- and high-level contacts with the Biden administration, including over climate issues, to show its anger with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August trip to self-ruled Taiwan.