China and the United States Join in Seeking Emissions Cuts

GLASGOW — The United States and China announced a joint agreement Wednesday to “enhance ambition” on climate change, saying they would work together to do more to cut emissions this decade while China committed for the first time to reduce methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

The pact between the world’s two biggest polluters came as a surprise to the thousands of attendees gathered here for a United Nations climate summit. The United States and China, which are rivals in trade and human rights, spoke as allies to fight global warming at relatively safe levels.

“We both see the challenge of climate change is existential and a severe one,” said Xie Zhenhua, China’s climate change envoy. “As two major powers in the world, China and the United States, we need to take our due responsibility and work together and work with others in the spirit of cooperation to address climate change.”

John Kerry, the U.S. special envoy to climate, responded to Mr. Xie’s comments with his own assessment. “The U.S. and China have no shortage of differences,” said Mr. Kerry, a former secretary of state with a long history of negotiating with the Chinese. “But on climate, cooperation is the only way to get this job done.”

The joint agreement was lacking in specifics. China did not agree to a new timetable under which it would reduce its emissions. China also did not set a ceiling on how high its carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases could reach before they began to fall. China agreed to “phase down” coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, starting in 2026, but did not specify by how much or over what period of time.

The announcement from China and the United States came on the same day that summit organizers issued an initial draft of a new global agreement to fight climate change that called on countries to “revisit and strengthen” by the end of 2022 plans for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and to “accelerate the phasing-out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels.”

If it is retained in its final form, the language on coal and government subsidies for fossil fuels would be a first for a U.N. Climate Agreement.

However, many countries and environmentalists feel that the rest is still too vague in key details such as the financial aid that richer nations should provide to those who are less fortunate due to the rising costs of adaptation and climate disasters.

The draft “is not the decisive language that this moment calls for,” said Aubrey Webson, chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States, a group of countries that are among those most threatened by climate change.

Scientists say that the world must cut its fossil fuel emissions in half by 2020 to keep global temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. This is a significant reduction from preindustrial levels. Beyond this threshold, there are increased risks of heat waves, droughts wildfires, floods, and species extinction. Already, the Earth has warmed by 1.1 degrees Celsius.

As negotiations enter their final stretch, nearly 200 countries representing the negotiators will demand significant changes. A new global agreement is required to be signed by all parties, as per tradition. Talks can be stopped if any one country objects.

Boris Johnson (British prime minister) returned to Glasgow Wednesday to appeal to countries to reach a compromise and forget about their differences. “The world has heard leaders from every country stand here and acknowledge the need for action,” he said. “And the world will find it absolutely incomprehensible if we fail to deliver that.”

But convincing nations around the world to move in a different direction, many of them dependent on fossil fuels and have their own internal politics is a daunting task..

Kerry stated that countries had no choice but work together. “This is not a discretionary thing,” he said. “This is science, it’s math and physics that dictate the road we have to travel. And we cannot reach our goal unless everyone works together.”

Many experts believe the China-US joint pact was inadequate to achieve the 2014 agreement to curb emissions. This agreement helped to spur the Paris climate deal among nearly 200 countries one year later.

“While this is not a game changer in the way the 2014 U.S.-China climate deal was, in many ways it’s just as much of a step forward given the geopolitical state of the relationship,” said Thom Woodroofe, a former climate diplomat and a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute working on United States-China climate cooperation. “It means the intense level of U.S.-China dialogue on climate can now begin to translate into cooperation.”

The agreement was praised by leaders and diplomats attending the climate summit. They said that they hoped it will give new energy to the global negotiations to prevent global temperatures rising to dangerous levels. With just days remaining before the summit ends, negotiators are working late into the night to try to hammer out a global accord that, they hope, can satisfy every country — no easy task.

Small island states such as the Maldives, which have been inhabited since thousands of years, are urging all countries to reduce their carbon emissions as soon as possible. Oil and coal producers like Russia and Australia aren’t as eager to rapidly phase out fossil fuels. Large developing countries such as India are looking for financial support to switch to cleaner energy.

As negotiators attempt to reach a deal before Nov. 12, there are four areas of contention

Speeding Up Emission Cuts

Under the landmark Paris climate agreement of 2015, every nation agreed that humanity should limit global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels while “pursuing efforts” to hold warming to just 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

Each nation agreed to submit a plan to reduce deforestation and shift away from fossil fuels in order to reach the target. These plans would also need to be updated every five years. Even though everyone agreed that the Paris pledges were insufficient, there was hope that countries would increase their actions and get closer towards the goal.

There are however some big problems.

First, the ratcheting has been slow and uneven. Most countries submitted new pledges to reduce their emissions by 2030, ahead of the Glasgow summit. Some countries, such as the United States and European Union, pledged to make further cuts in the next decade. However, others, such as Australia and Brazil, did not make any progress in their short-term plans.

The world is likely to heat up between 2.4 and 2.7 degrees Celsius this year, according to analysts who compared the short-term promises. That’s an improvement over Paris, but it would still increase the likelihood of climate catastrophes that could exacerbate hunger, disease and conflict.

A number of countries most at risk due to climate change, including Ethiopia and Bhutan want the world to adhere to the 1.5 degrees Celsius target. Otherwise, they will be facing unmanageable disasters.

“1.5 degrees is what we need to survive,” Mia Mottley, prime minister of Barbados, said last week. “Two degrees is a death sentence for the people of Antigua and Barbuda, Maldives, Domenica, Fiji, Kenya, Mozambique, Samoa and Barbados.”

The question of how to speed up climate efforts is still a topic of debate.

Many countries in crisis want countries to return to the United Nations each year with stronger plans to ensure the world stays on track for 1.5 degrees Celsius. Currently, countries aren’t expected to update their plans until 2025, which some fear could be too late.

But, this proposal is met with opposition from Russia and other fossil fuel producers like Saudi Arabia. And there’s not even consensus that 1.5 degrees should be the official goal: The United States and the European Union have supported focusing on that stricter target, but some major emitters like China have balked.

Where’s the Money?

Money has been a major sticking point in the global fight to combat climate change for decades. Tensions over the topic have flared once again in Glasgow.

President Biden and European leaders have emphasized that developing countries, such as South Africa, India and Indonesia, need to accelerate their transition away from coal-powered power plants. They counter that they don’t have the financial resources, and that rich nations are being stingy in their aid.

A decade ago, the world’s wealthiest economies pledged to mobilize $100 billion per year in climate finance for poorer countries by 2020. They have failed to meet their commitments by tens or billions of dollars each year.

However, there has been very little climate aid in the past to help poorer nations cope with the risks of a warmer planet. This includes sea walls and early warning systems for flooding and droughts.

Vulnerable nations warn that they need more help to survive. A group of African nations along with China, India, and Indonesia have requested $1.3 trillion per annum after 2025. That is more than any offer that wealthy countries have made.

Even as vulnerable countries plead for more climate aid, they have asked for separate compensation for climate damages that they can’t adapt to. They also argue that wealthy countries like the United States of America and the European Union should pay for the climate damages they have caused. This issue is known as “loss and damage.”

“Lots of people are losing their lives, they are losing their future, and someone has to be responsible, and those people need to be compensated,” said A.K. Abdul Momen is Bangladesh’s foreign minister.

However, richer nations have always resisted the calls for a specific funding mechanism in case of loss or damage, fearing that it might open the door for liability claims. Only the Scottish government has offered specific dollar amounts. It pledged $1.4million last week to help victims of climate disasters.

Regulating Carbon Markets

One of the most difficult issues is how to regulate the rapidly growing global market for carbon offsets. Although the Paris agreement demanded clearer rules in 2015, negotiators failed to reach an agreement on this technical and complex topic.

Carbon offsets are a way for countries or businesses to offset their own emissions and pay for mitigation elsewhere. This raises difficult questions about accounting and transparency as well as verification.

Some climate advocates stated that they would prefer negotiators leave Glasgow without a solution to these issues than with weak rules.

“No point in accepting phony carbon credits into the system, which would directly increase warming,” wroteMohamed Adow, director at Power Shift Africa, an institute of research in Kenya.

The developing countries also requested that a portion of all carbon credit trade proceeds be set aside for an adaptability fund. But the European Union has criticized this idea, calling it a “mandatory international tax.”