HONG KONG — For all their differences, the United States and China have one thing in common: the population of both is sweating during one of the hottest summers on record.
As US Climate Envoy John Kerry arrived in Beijing for talks with Chinese officials earlier this week, temperatures hit a record high of nearly 126 degrees Fahrenheit in China’s arid northwest. Meanwhile, millions of people in the US are experiencing an unrelenting heat wave, with more records expected to be broken this week.
The stakes could hardly be higher.
Experts say the extreme weather being experienced around the world is largely due to climate change and that there is no solution without the United States and China, the world’s two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. But relations between the two countries have been stalemate over disputes over trade, human rights and Taiwan’s status, freezing climate diplomacy for much of the past year.
That has implications for the whole world, said Li Shuo, a senior global policy adviser at Greenpeace’s East Asia office in Beijing.
When the United States and China work together on climate change, it pushes other countries to make progress as well, he said Tuesday. But «when they can’t talk to each other, the global climate conversation becomes collateral damage.»
Kerry’s trip to China, his third as a US climate envoy, is the first formal high-level climate diplomacy between the two countries since China suspended talks last August after Nancy Pelosi, the president of the Camera at that time, will visit Taiwan, an autonomous island. that Beijing claims as its territory. Kerry is the third senior US official to visit China in recent weeks as the world’s two largest economies try to improve ties.
Kerry said cooperation on climate change, once a bright spot in US-China diplomacy, could put the relationship back on track.
«Climate, as you know, is a global problem, not a bilateral problem,» he said when meeting with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi on Tuesday. «It is a threat to all humanity.»
Wang said the US-China cooperation on climate change has «huge potential» but cannot be separated from the «general environment» of bilateral relations, according to a Chinese Foreign Ministry reading.
Their meeting on Tuesday came as Beijing endured a record 27 days this year of temperatures above 95 F.
During his trip, Kerry focused on issues like deforestation and reducing methane emissions. He praised China’s world-leading advances in renewable energy, but said they have been undermined by its accelerated construction of coal-fired power plants. He also encouraged China to «enhance its climate ambition,» according to a State Department reading.
The United States has a goal of reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, while China has twin goals of reaching peak emissions by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2060.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, who did not meet with Kerry, told a national conference on environmental protection in Beijing on Tuesday that while China is still committed to those goals, how it achieves them «should and should be determined.» by ourselves, and will never be influenced by others,» according to state broadcaster CCTV.
The main disagreement between the two countries is «how much each should and have done,» said Li Zhengyan, an assistant professor in the department of public policy and administration at the University of Hong Kong who studies environmental policy.
The United States expects China to do more because it is the world’s biggest emitter and has a strong economy, he said, while China argues that it is still a developing country and that developed countries like the United States should take more responsibility in the fight against climate change due to its “huge historical emissions”.