A14 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, OCTOBER 26 , 2021
coordination has made him a
target of Republicans in Con-
gress, who view him as a phantom
presence behind any less-than-
confrontational move with China
the Biden administration makes.
“It’s time to fire John Kerry,”
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of
Florida said in a news release last
month.
Rubio and other Republicans
accuse Kerry of single-handedly
stalling the Uyghur Forced Labor
Act, a bill designed to ban prod-
ucts made with forced labor in
Xinjiang.
U.S. of ficials say the adminis-
tration remains staunchly op-
posed to forced labor, but there is
concern across the executive
branch that the bill could effec-
tively ban all polysilicon from
Xinjiang, the material inside
most of the world’s solar panels, a
critical tool in transitioning away
from a carbon economy.
“Our goal is to figure out how
best to lift up workers’ rights and
meet our climate commitments,”
said the first senior administra-
tion official.
In meetings on Capitol Hill,
Kerry’s deputy, Jonathan Persh-
ing, has told lawmakers that the
U.S. government will need more
time, five to 10 years, to move the
global supply chain for solar pan-
els away from Xinjiang, accord-
ing to notes taken from a meeting
with him and provided to The
Washington Post. Pershing said
the administration wants flexibil-
ity in the legislation to manage a
transition.
[email protected]
[email protected]a meeting with Xi, said officials
familiar with the discussion. Xi
made clear that an in-person
meeting was off the table, but U.S.
and Chinese officials remained in
touch. After Sullivan traveled to
Zurich for a six-hour meeting
with Chinese foreign policy advis-
er Yang Jiechi last month, the two
presidents agreed to hold a virtu-
al summit by year’s end.
Officials insist Kerry and Sulli-
van are in line on an overall
strategy and differences are
mostly tactical.
“Kerry’s job is to advocate for
policies that will yield improve-
ment on climate. He is seized with
the mission,” said Danny Russel, a
former career diplomat who has
worked with both Kerry and Sul-
livan. “It’s a different set of vari-
ables for the national security
adviser. From Jake’s perspective,
there is a whole universe of fac-
tors to consider.”
White House officials believe
what will move China on climate
is the sense that it is the diplomat-
ic outlier as the United States
encourages countries such as In-
donesia, Australia and India to
reduce emissions.
They do not believe “if we’re
nicer to China, they’ll do more for
us on climate or anything else,”
said the first senior administra-
tion official.
Advocates for Kerry say his
actions have been in line with this
viewpoint, first traveling to the
capitals of U.S. allies and partners
in Europe and elsewhere to drum
up support for emissions reduc-
tions.
But Kerry’s focus on climateed at a l ower level through the
summer, with Deputy Secretary
of State Wendy Sherman travel-
ing to Tianjin in July, and Kerry
traveling to the same city to meet
officials last month.
Before Sherman’s visit, Chi-
nese officials refused to confirm
her counterpart would see her
until just before Sherman’s arriv-
al in a move widely seen as
disrespectful. The Chinese spent
much of the meeting complain-
ing bitterly about U.S. behavior,
said officials familiar with the
matter. On Kerry’s visit, they
again ruled out any progress on
climate while the United States
continued to criticize China on
human rights and other issues.
The disappointing meetings
ended up uniting Biden’s team
behind the need to connect the
two presidents.
“The importance of a call be-
tween the leaders became clear
after a number of meetings at the
sub-leader level that were not
constructive,” said a second sen-
ior administration official.
“There was unanimity in the ad-
ministration at this point that we
were not getting anywhere in the
bilateral relationship at that level
and we were concerned that Bei-
jing was not being responsible in
its management of the competi-
tion.”
“Due to the centralization of
power in Xi’s hands, we assessed
that we needed to engage at the
top to move the ball forward,” the
official added.
So on Sept. 9, the two presi-
dents held a 90-minute call in
which Biden broached the idea ofnuclear and wind energy, has
been dropped because of opposi-
tion from Sen. Joe Manchin III, a
coal-friendly Democrat from
West Virginia. The program was
designed to show foreign leaders
that the United States is taking
the steps necessary to meet its
goals of cutting emissions by 50
percent from 2005 levels in the
next four years.
In China, a chronic electricity
shortage reverberating across
factories and industries this
month is raising doubts about
whether it will be willing to take
coal-fired plants offline as it tries
to meet its massive energy needs.
The Biden administration re-
jects the notion that it’s traveling
to Scotland empty-handed, not-
ing its ambitious emissions target
and pledge to double U.S. finan-
cial support for developing coun-
tries to adopt clean-energy tech-
nologies.
But many world leaders may
see those commitments as merely
words on a page rather than
concrete action.
A potential disappointment in
Glasgow is something Kerry has
tried desperately to avoid. Since
early summer, he began advocat-
ing for a phone call between
Biden and Xi in the hopes of
finding common ground on cli-
mate ahead of COP26, viewing
the tense relationship as a major
problem.
Sullivan disagreed, sensing
that such a call was premature,
said senior administration offi-
cials.
Instead, contacts between the
United States and China proceed-jiang.
But the tensions between the
two nations have worried liberal
lawmakers and climate activists
concerned that poor relations be-
tween the world’s two biggest
polluters will translate into an
unproductive climate conference
at a t ime of existential peril.
“U.S. collaboration with China
on climate is fundamental due to
China’s major role in emitting
carbon dioxide but also as a lead-
ing producer of the green tech-
nologies required for decarbon-
ization,” said a draft of a letter to
Biden that Democratic Reps.
Raúl Grijalva (Ariz.), chair of the
Natural Resources Committee,
and Judy Chu (Calif.), chair of the
Congressional Asian Pacific
American Caucus, are organiz-
ing. “Simply put, there is no
conceivable way to address the
climate crisis without substan-
tially strengthening communica-
tion and collaboration between
our nations.”
Climate watchers view the pol-
icies of Beijing and Washington
as limited by domestic political
constraints.
“Glasgow will be one of the
most difficult COPs in history,”
said Shuo Li, a senior global
policy adviser at Greenpeace.
“I hope it doesn’t go as bad, but
it already bears some resem-
blance to Copenhagen,” he said,
referencing a 2009 climate con-
ference many view as a failure.
In Washington, the most po-
tent aspect of Biden’s climate
agenda, a $150 billion program to
replace the nation’s coal- and
gas-fired power plants with solar,phere reached records in 2020,
despite the economic slowdown
caused by the coronavirus pan-
demic.
“We are way off track,” said
Petteri Taalas, secretary general
of the World Meteorological Or-
ganization. “We need to revisit
our industrial, energy and trans-
port systems and whole way of
life.”
The group’s report said scien-
tists found that carbon dioxide,
the main greenhouse gas in the
atmosphere, had reached 149 per-
cent of preindustrial levels. Meth-
ane, which has a warming impact
more than 80 times that of carbon
dioxide, was up 262 percent.
British Prime Minister Boris
Johnson confessed Monday that
he was “very worried” about
COP26 failing.
Asked about getting the world
leaders to commit to net-zero
emissions by 2050, he said: “I
think it can be done. It will be
very, very tough, this summit, and
I’m very worried because it might
go wrong and we might not get
the agreements that we need, and
it’s touch-and-go.”
[email protected]
[email protected]Booth reported from London and
Coletta from Toronto. Brady Dennis
and Sarah Kaplan in Washington
contributed to this report.available, but officials said it was
becoming clear the goal hadn’t
been met. The OECD estimates
funding ranging from $83 billion
to $88 billion this year.
President Biden announced
last month at the U.N. General
Assembly that he would work
with Congress to double U.S.
funding provided each year to
help low-income nations combat
climate change to $11.4 billion by
2024.
The U.N. report included 116
new or updated Nationally Deter-
mined Contributions. Some 71
nations have set a target to be
“carbon-neutral” by around mid-
century. It also found that the
countries with the most ambi-
tious goals would see their green-
house gas emissions lowered by
83 to 88 percent in 2050 com-
pared with 2019.
The scientific consensus, con-
tained in the latest report by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Cli-
mate Change, estimated that cap-
ping global average temperature
increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius
requires that carbon dioxide
emissions be reduced by 45 per-
cent in 2030.
“There has been progress,”
Sharma said, “but not enough.”
The U.N. weather agency also
released a sobering report Mon-
day, warning that concentrations
of greenhouse gases in the atmos-said that while the “level of hon-
esty” from rich countries about
missing their collective target is
welcome, the gap is “unaccept-
able.”
“The question today is: Does
this document actually show the
urgency that it is for rich coun-
tries to massively scale up climate
finance flows during the COP...
and the clear answer is no,” he
said. “The message that is coming
from this document is you need to
wait until 2023 to see if we will be
able to deliver the $100 billion.”
The report doesn’t name and
shame individual countries, but
says that “all developed countries
have to step up efforts.” It said one
reason developed nations have
missed their target is because
“private finance mobilization un-
derperformed against expecta-
tions.”
Efforts to marshal the funding
have been complicated by de-
bates about whether the aid
should take the form of loans or
grants. Determining how much
has been mobilized has been diffi-
cult because of a lack of uniformi-
ty in how countries account for
climate finance.
An analysis last month from
the OECD found that developed
nations marshaled $79.6 billion
in 2019 — up 2 percent from 2018,
but $20 billion short of the prom-
ise. Final totals for 2020 aren’t yetly vulnerable to its consequences.
The issue is poised to be a
major sticking point at COP26,
where slowing the world’s warm-
ing will depend on good faith and
collective action. Many develop-
ing nations have said their cli-
mate pledges are conditional on
receiving outside support.
“I’m disappointed, as are devel-
oping countries,” Flasbarth told
reporters Monday. “But... there
is a lot of money already on the
table. There is a lot of support and
it will increase and it has to
increase.”
The report, which is based on
projections from the Organiza-
tion for Economic Cooperation
and Development, estimates that
financing will reach or surpass
$100 billion in 2023 and exceed
$110 billion in 2025. Many ana-
lysts have said the initial $100 bil-
lion-a-year goal is insufficient.
Mohamed Adow, director of
Power Shift Africa, a Nairobi-
based think tank, said the inabili-
ty of rich countries to keep their
promise is “utterly shameful.”
“Poor nations will not be
conned,” he said, “and the leaders
of the developed world need to
pull their finger out and get this
money on the table if COP26 is
going to be a success.”
Eddy Pérez, international cli-
mate diplomacy manager for Cli-
mate Action Netw ork Canada,Paris climate accord’s goal of lim-
iting warming to “well below” 2
degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit)
compared with preindustrial lev-
els, and, if possible, to 1.5 degrees
Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
“The message from this update
is loud and clear: Parties must
urgently redouble their climate
efforts,” said Patricia Espinosa,
executive secretary of the U.N.
Framework Convention on Cli-
mate Change.
She said that “overshooting the
temperature goals will lead to a
destabilized world and endless
suffering, especially among those
who have contributed the least”
to climate change.
A separate report Monday
from Canadian Environment
Minister Jonathan Wilkinson
and Jochen Flasbarth, his Ger-
man counterpart, said rich coun-
tries would probably meet their
goal of providing $100 billion
annually to developing nations in
2023 — three years behind sched-
ule.
The pair was tasked by COP
President Alok Sharma with com-
ing up with a plan to deliver the
funds — an issue he has called
“totemic.” The failure of rich
coun tries to meet their goal has
fueled mistrust among develop-
ing nations, which historically
have done less to fuel climate
change but are disproportionate-BY WILLIAM BOOTH
AND AMANDA COLETTAGlobal greenhouse gas emis-
sions are on a catastrophic trajec-
tory and developed nations will
fall short of a pledge made more
than a decade ago to mobilize
$100 billion a year by 2020 to help
developing nations transition to
greener economies and adapt to
climate change, two reports con-
cluded Monday.
The findings raise the stakes
for — and threaten to undermine
— the success of a United Nations
climate summit, known as
COP26, that is set to begin in
Glasgow, Scotland, next week and
coul d determine whether the
world can effectively reset its
climate trajectory.
Greenhouse gas emissions are
on a path to increase 16 percent
by the end of the decade com-
pared with 2010, setting the
world on a d angerous course of
continued warming, the United
Nations said in a report synthe-
sizing the Nationally Determined
Contributions — or commitments
— of 192 nations to reduce emis-
sions.
Without more-ambitious
pledges, the world is projected to
warm 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9 de-
grees Fahrenheit) by the end of
the century compared with the
end of the 1800s — far above the
Findings on emissions goals, funding pledges raise stakes for climate summit
Now, with less than a week
before leaders of nearly 200 coun-
tries arrive in Glasgow for the
U.N. summit known as COP26,
expectations for a major break-
through are dim: Chinese Presi-
dent Xi Jinping will not attend in
person, and Washington and Bei-
jing face domestic political con-
straints on their international
climate ambitions.
The desire to make progress on
climate change has led to ten-
sions among Biden’s top aides
over how to manage Washing-
ton’s competing priorities with
Beijing.
Kerry has repeatedly pushed
for direct diplomacy between
Biden and Xi, believing that an
improved bilateral relationship
can produce better outcomes in
Scotland. White House aides, in-
cluding national security adviser
Jake Sullivan, are more skeptical
that the United States alone can
coax China into reducing emis-
sions. Just as Washington would
be averse to overhauling its en-
ergy policies on the basis of for-
eign pressure, so too would Bei-
jing.
“They’re going to make their
decisions based on their national
interest,” said a senior adminis-
tration official, who, like others,
spoke on the condition of ano-
nymity to discuss sensitive mat-
ters.
The standoff with China, the
world’s largest carbon emitter
and home to half the world’s
coal-fired power plants, has pre-
sented a significant challenge for
the Biden administration, which
has identified both climate
change as an “existential threat”
and China as “the biggest geopo-
litical test of the 21st century.”
The United States is pressing
China to set more ambitious com-
mitments for when it will peak its
carbon emissions and offer spe-
cifics about Xi’s promise to stop
financing coal-fired power plants
abroad. Absent those actions,
global temperature increases are
expected to surpass 2 degrees
Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) in the
coming years, resulting in a rise
of extreme weather events, hurri-
canes, droughts, forest fires, loss
of biodiversity, and food and wa-
ter scarcity.
As it presses its climate initia-
tives, the Biden administration is
also demanding that Beijing stop
threatening Taiwan, cease its
crackdown on freedoms in Hong
Kong, end its campaign of mass
detention and sterilization of eth-
nic minorities in Xinjiang, and
address a variety of other griev-
ances related to trade and cyber-
security.
Managing these priorities is
Sullivan, who has ruled out ac-
commodating China to make
gains on climate.
“We are not in the business of
trading cooperation with China
on climate change as a favor that
Beijing is doing for the United
States,” Sullivan said at a s ecurity
conference this spring, a message
he repeated in a meeting with his
Chinese counterpart in Zurich
earlier this month.
The hard line has pleased the
East Asia divisions at the State
Department and Pentagon as well
as China hawks on Capitol Hill
who have cheered Biden’s contin-
uation of Trump-era tariffs, impo-
sition of new sanctions on Beijing
and use of the word “genocide” to
describe Beijing’s actions in Xin-
CHINA FROM A
Tension among Biden aides on China policy in advance of climate summit
JABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST
Climate envoy John F. Kerry has pushed for direct diplomacy between the U.S. and Chinese presidents, believing a better bilateral relationship can produce better outcomes.