The Washington Post - USA (2020-10-20)

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

ing their environmental record

and they put out an even stron-

ger one, and the Trump adminis-

tration has given them a lot to

work with.”

He said the dueling attacks

were “a reminder of how

strained the U.S.-China relation-

ship is, and there’s going to need

to be a lot of work to be done to

allow for a constructive relation-

ship on climate moving forward.”

The relationship between Chi-

na and the United States has

been deteriorating for years. Chi-

na has seized islands in the

South China Sea, deploying mili-

tary forces to the disputed terri-

tories. It has detained in prison

camps large numbers of Uighurs

seen as possible threats. And it

has pursued trade policies that

have made it difficult for Ameri-

can companies to do business

there.

During his administration,

President Barack Obama man-

aged to make climate change key

to the relationship and succeed-

ed in wooing Beijing to support

broad policies to slow the growth

in greenhouse gases and shift the

Chinese economy toward renew-

able sources of energy.

The planet has already

warmed by 1 degree Celsius since

the late 1800s, and many parts of

the world have already reached

the 2 degree Celsius mark that

scientists say should be the limit

to prevent dire climate change.

On Monday, however, China’s

report reiterated many of the

weak but well-known points in

U.S. climate policy. The United

States has fallen behind China in

emissions, but its emissions per

capita are twice as high as Chi-

na’s, whose population is five

times as big. China also criticized

Trump for rolling back nearly 70

domestic policies — signaling the

pullout from the Paris climate

accord — and failing to honor the

U.S. agreement to pay its share of

Green Climate Fund contribu-

tions. It said the United States

accounts for 95.7 percent of total

international arrears to the fund.

The ministry also said that

“due to the negative stance of the

U.S.,” summit meetings of the

world’s 20 largest economies had

“failed to reach consensus on

climate change for three consec-

utive years starting from 2017,

and each time the ’19+1 ap-

proach was adopted as a compro-

mise.”

“China’s fact sheet on U.S.

damage to the environment is a

slap in the face for a country that

normally prides itself on its envi-

ronmental leadership,” said Jo-

anna Lewis, director of George-

town University’s science, tech-

nology and international affairs

program. “It demonstrates how

the U.S. has lost almost all of its

moral high ground when it

comes to engaging with China

and other emerging economies

on the environment and climate

change in particular.”

She said, “While China’s envi-

ronmental record is highly prob-

lematic, the country has made

impressive gains in many areas

while the current U.S. adminis-

tration continues to roll back

many hard-won environmental

protection laws.”

BY STEVEN MUFSON

China on Monday delivered a
diatribe against U.S. climate pol-
icies, saying that under President
Trump, the United States “is
widely viewed as a consensus-
breaker and a troublemaker.”
Beijing’s Foreign Affairs Min-
istry blamed Trump’s “negative
stance” and “retrogression on
climate change” for undermin-
ing progress on an international
climate accord. Trump, who
plans to formally pull out of the
Paris climate agreement the day
after Election Day, has “seriously
undermined the fairness, effi-
ciency and effectiveness of global
environmental governance,” the
ministry said in a fact sheet.
The barrage from Beijing re-
sembled the tit-for-tat criticism
that China and the United States
have traded on subjects such as
human rights, trade and the
expulsion of reporters and diplo-
mats, but climate policies have
been largely the exception. Not
anymore.
China, the world’s biggest
emitter of greenhouse gases,
took aim at the United States, the
second-biggest emitter, after the
State Department on Sept. 25
issued its “China’s Environmen-
tal Abuses Fact Sheet,” which
said that Beijing “threatens the
global economy and global
health by unsustainably exploit-
ing natural resources and export-
ing its willful disregard for the
environment through its One
Belt One Road initiative.”
In the U.S. fact sheet, Secre-
tary of State Mike Pompeo said
“too much of the Chinese Com-
munist Party’s economy is built
on willful disregard for air, land,
and water quality. The Chinese
people — and the world — de-
serve better.”
“This seems like a reminder
that people who live in glass
houses shouldn’t throw stones,”
Jason Bordoff, director of Colum-
bia University’s global energy
center, said of China’s report.
“We put out a statement attack-

Beijing won praise interna-

tionally in September when it

announced that its greenhouse

gas emissions would peak in the

year 2030 and that it would

reach net-zero emissions for the

entire economy by 2060.

The State Department fact

sheet, however, criticized China’s

dams on the Mekong River, ma-

rine debris, plastic product

waste, illegal logging, mercury

emissions and air quality.

China “has been the world’s

largest annual greenhouse gas

(GHG) emitter since 2006,” the

State Department report said.

“China’s total emissions are

twice that of the United States

and nearly one third of all emis-

sions globally.”

China replied in its fact sheet

that between 1751 and 2010,

emissions from the U.S. energy

and industrial sectors accounted

for 27.9 percent of the global

total and three times as much as

China.

Sarah O. Ladislaw, director of

the energy security and climate

change program at the Center for

Strategic and International Stud-

ies, said that the Chinese state-

ment “will irk the Trump admin-

istration but not provoke them

too much because climate

change is not a high-priority

issue for this administration.”

“The U.S. and China share the

same challenge — some things

they do are great for climate and

other things are damaging,”

Ladislaw said. She said the Unit-

ed States was “the engine of

global innovation, but at the

federal level, it fails to stay true

to its commitment when political

leadership changes. China has

set ambitious targets for itself

and is a clean-energy manufac-

turing leader, but it is also a big

source of global emissions both

at home and through its invest-

ments overseas and is not always

transparent about its behavior.”

Pete Ogden, a vice president at

the United Nations Foundation

and former climate expert dur-

ing the Obama administration,

said, “When it comes to the

critical and urgent climate and

environmental threats that the

world is facing, this diplomatic

energy of the U.S. and China

should be focused on solutions,

not recriminations.”

[email protected]

Beijing fires back with criticism of U.S. climate policies

MUYU XU/REUTERS

A coal-fired heating complex i n the Chinese city of Harbin. China took aim at the United States after the State Department said Beijing

“threatens the global economy and global health by unsustainably exploiting natural resources and exporting” that attitude abroad.

Says Trump’s ‘negative

stance’ derails progress

on international accord

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