Joe Biden and Xi Jinping take 'major step' in race to slow climate change
Joe Biden and Xi Jinping released a joint statement pledging to step up climate change efforts ahead of their summit.
Joe Biden and Xi Jinping have both pledged to accelerate their countries’ efforts to address climate change.
This comes shortly before the two presidents are due to meet face to face for the first time in a year at a summit in San Francisco in order to help stabilise the relationship between China and the US.
And it comes weeks after California Governor Gavin Newson made a week-long visit to China to promote joint climate efforts in multiple cities and provinces.
Biden and Xi have made commitments to take steps to reduce emissions of methane and other greenhouse gases, but notably not carbon dioxide.
The joint statement called for climate cooperation between states, provinces, and cities and announced China and the US will hold an event promoting this cooperation in 2024.
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David Waskow, the international climate director at the World Resources Institute, believes this is still “a major step” as China is the world’s largest emitter of methane.
He said: “Serious actions to curb this gas is essential for slowing global warming in the near-term.”
China is the world’s largest emitter of methane and that “serious actions to curb this gas is essential for slowing global warming in the near-term”.
Major emitters in China include coal mines, oil and gas fields, farms, landfills, and sewage treatment plants.
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This statement also comes two weeks before a vital UN summit on climate change in Dubai, of which co-operation between the world’s two biggest greenhouse gas emitters, China and the US, is of paramount importance.
During these talks, the US and China will host a meeting on methane and other greenhouses gases, together with the United Arab Emirates, as was announced in the statement yesterday.
Earlier this year, it was unclear whether China and the US would cooperate in time for the summit, given the deterioration in ties due to issues such as the Russia-Ukraine war and new technologies.
In a joint statement released to Washington and Beijing, they said: “[They] are aware of the important role they play” and “will work together … to rise up to one of the greatest challenges of our time.”
They also agreed to restart talks on energy policies and launch a working group on enhancing climate action in “the critical decade of the 2020s”.
Both nations are members of the G20 and therefore made a pledge to make efforts towards tripling the global renewable energy capacity by 2030.
China is trying to uphold this by looking to sell wind and solar power equipment abroad after investing heavily in factories that will manufacture it.
The Chinese government also issued a plan last week to control methane emissions, including by developing an accounting and reporting system for emissions.
Climate experts such as Waskow have been left disappointed as the new statement made no mention of pledging to phase out fossil fuels, but this is not surprising considering China is encouraging the construction of coal power plants and paying money to keep them open.
