The World Has Waited for the U.S. and China to Take Action on Climate Change. They Just Did.
President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced on Wednesday commitments to reduce both countries’ greenhouse gas emissions. The surprise announcement, which came while Obama visits Beijing this week, is the clearest sign yet the two countries are serious on climate change.
After months of negotiations with China, Obama has pledged the U.S. to cut emissions between 26 and 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. This is double the pace of carbon cuts the U.S had already pledged to reach by 2020.
But China’s commitments might be even more unexpected, because it is the first time the growing economy has committed to a year for capping its emissions—seen as a crucial step for avoiding the worst-case scenarios of global warming. Xi pledged this will happen around 2030, though it will try to reach this peak as early as possible. China also agreed to increase the share of energy that doesn’t come from fossil fuels to 20 percent by 2030.
Together, the U.S. and China are responsible for 45 percent of global emissions. For that reason alone, they are the most closely watched countries in the year before climate change negotiators convene in Paris to set post-2020 goals that finally slow carbon pollution.
Here’s why the rest of the world will take note:
China is serious about climate change.
China had already signaled it would tackle air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, with initiatives like launching a national market for trading carbon permits and promising to make Beijing coal-free by 2020. Experts like Jake Schmidt, director of the International Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, just weren’t sure how much it was ready to commit to. “A couple of years ago, if anybody had said that China will have its C02 peak in 2030, it would have sounded unrealistic,” Schmidt said in an interview. “Most analysts back then were talking about 2040 or much later.”
Republicans have long used China’s growing emissions as a reason why the U.S. should do nothing. For instance, Senator Marco Rubio argued in 2013 that as “a country, not a planet,” U.S. action would have “a very negligible impact on the environment […] China, India, and others — they’re now the largest polluters in the world by far.” (A Climate Desk video compiles more of these excuses). China could just as easily point out that the U.S. was not doing enough as the world’s biggest polluter historically. This deal undercuts a favorite Republican excuse for sitting out of a global climate change agreement.
