Climate talks are back on track between China and the United States, the two biggest carbon polluters, yet China says it will chart its own climate actions without outside interference.
China's President Xi Jinping took an apparent swipe at mulilateral approaches to the climate crisis on Wednesday at the end of four days of high-level U.S.-China climate talks.
“The pathway and means for reaching this goal, and the tempo and intensity, should be and must be determined by ourselves, and never under the sway of others,” Xi said.
That could spell trouble for the COP28 climate summit talks due to begin in November at Dubai. However, John Kerry, the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, described the two nations holding talks as progress by itself.
He said the global heat wave influenced the talks by adding a sense of urgency and it's possible U.S. President Joe Biden and Xi – who did not meet with Kerry – could meet later this year.
"We came to Beijing in order to 'unstick' what has been stuck for almost a year. And that's the in-person dialogue between the United States and China," Kerry, a former U.S. Secretary of State, told reporters. "And indeed we did succeed in having long and very detailed meetings with a lot to catch up on."
Kerry said he had hoped to "break new ground" with Beijing in transitioning away from coal and reducing methane emissions, and he called the talks productive despite the lack of any new agreement. Kerry met with China's Vice President Han Zheng and its top climate official, Xie Zhenhua, and top diplomat, Wang Yi.
“It is clear that we are going to need a little more work to be able to complete that task, which we still believe – both of us – is do-able,” he said.
"The climate issue is not a bilateral issue, in our judgement. President Biden believes, as I think most of the world does, that the climate crisis is a universal threat to humankind. And we all have a responsibility to deal with it as rapidly as we can."
Agreement to keep the talks going
Kerry "underscored that the world cannot solve the climate crisis without the full engagement and commitment" of China and the U.S., the U.S. State Department said. All nations, he emphasized, must accelerate action ahead of the COP28 climate summit talks.
The summit will bring together delegates to fulfill nations' obligations under the 2015 Paris Agreement to stick to an upper limit of 2° average temperature rise, and, preferably, no more than a 1.5° increase.
Kerry said limiting warming to a 1.5° increase will require significant efforts by China to cut carbon and non-carbon emissions, such as methane, and to help end illegal deforestation that releases much of the carbon stored by trees back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, which traps heat in the atmosphere.
"We both agreed that we want to work together to guarantee a positive outcome from COP28, where obviously the cooperation of China and the United States is critical to any outcome," Kerry said. "We are already pinpointing the time for our next meeting."
