On 18 November, following a turbulent presidential election season, China Dialogue gathered a panel of experts to discuss the future of US\u2013China climate politics. Coinciding with London Climate Action Week 2020, the panel addressed questions including whether a new US president will usher in a transformation in China\u2013US cooperation, the limits of executive action on climate diplomacy and how we can harness cooperative and competitive dynamics in the midst of a currently fraught relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Parts of the video and the quotes below have been edited for clarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sam Geall (chair) \u2013 executive director, China Dialogue
David Vance Wagner \u2013 vice president of strategic partnerships, Energy Foundation China
Li Shuo \u2013\u00a0senior global policy advisor, Greenpeace East Asia
Alex Wang \u2013 professor of law at University of California, UCLA Law
Bernice Lee \u2013 executive director, Hoffmann Centre for Sustainable Resource Economy, Chatham House<\/p>\n\n\n\n
08:21<\/a>: I think most forms of cooperation […] will be very difficult in the near term. But what is<\/em> possible is dialogue, and lots of it. Dialogues on pathways to carbon neutrality, on respective domestic policy progress, on governance within the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement, on finance and economic recovery, sub-national action […] US\u2013China climate dialogue doesn\u2019t mean we agree on everything, and it doesn\u2019t mean that we aren\u2019t vociferously arguing about other things in other channels. What it does mean is that we\u2019re serious about the threat of climate change and the need for the world\u2019s two largest economies and emitters to find common ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over 40%<\/p> of the world’s carbon emissions come from the US and China<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n 29:40<\/a>: It\u2019s critical that the Biden-Harris administration embeds climate expertise and climate leadership throughout the federal government. This means not just having strong climate champions at the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Energy or in the White House, but making sure we have people with climate expertise, climate ambition and climate credibility throughout all of the other agencies of [the] federal government.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n 56:30<\/a>: <\/strong>Trust isn\u2019t naturally created; trust is deliberately created through regular engagement and listening. At the most basic level, American\u2019s need to be aware that the most toxic narrative within China is that America is only pushing China to take climate action or even to limit overseas investment because it\u2019s some sort of strategy of American containment of China, or America\u2019s jealousy of China, or America\u2019s inability to cope with a rising China. The climate conversation has to be divorced from that if we\u2019re going to have this trust and dialogue that\u2019s based on mutual interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 13:19<\/a>: The US accumulated a lot of climate ambition deficit over the past four years under the Trump administration, so it is backsliding from its 2015 commitments. Whereas China is on track or even overachieving some of its commitments. We can have a separate discussion about whether what the Chinese or the US offered in the first place was ambitious enough, but from a diplomatic and political point of view, there is an interesting asymmetry in the sense that the US is not delivering its commitment and China is doing more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 15:08<\/a>: When we talk about US-China climate engagement, we are talking about an issue that is larger than the environment. We are talking about essentially the biggest challenge of our time from a geo-political point of view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 39:35<\/a>: [Domestic coal power plant construction] does not make environmental sense of course. It does not make climate sense because it will just add more carbon emissions to the atmosphere. Most importantly it does not make economic sense anymore, and this is the key difference between now and a few years ago. The reason why those coal power plants will become stranded assets is that the country has already managed to get more coal power fleet than it needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 20:26<\/a>: <\/strong>I would love to see if China in the near-term can implement more specific targets: carbon caps, tougher ramp-downs on coal, removals of any policies that will create perverse incentives. Early draft rules on the carbon trading market in China suggest some possibility of subsidies for efficient coal, which is not what we want when we\u2019re heading towards a world of carbon neutrality. In the US we\u2019re in a very exciting time. We have an administration that\u2019s talking about climate change and embedding climate change in areas that are not only environmental: bringing all parts of the government in and potentially creating a national climate council\u2026 Maybe building institutions that are climate oriented will help sustain [global climate action] throughout subsequent administrations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 34:23<\/a>: There is much more support [in the US] for global climate action than most people realise\u2026 There was a Pew poll<\/a> on this about half a year ago that says two-thirds of Americans think the government needs to do more on climate change, 83% of Americans support alternative energy. More than half of Republicans support a variety of policies. It\u2019s worth emphasising that point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 22:48<\/a>: <\/strong>My view is that the most important thing is to see strong action domestically in each country sending the signal that these countries, in their own interests \u2013 for both the environment, the jobs and the economy \u2013 are moving forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 26:18<\/a>: What a [race-to-the-top approach for climate standards] requires, is setting high ambitious standards, clear time-frames, transparent rules, but also a very clear criteria for achievement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 26:45<\/a>: We have to really take a clear-eyed look in terms of how best to harness trade-related rules to deliver the kind of low-carbon, low-cost options that we know are possible on the one side; but on the other, making sure the more contentious elements \u2013 for example related to border carbon adjustments \u2013 are discussed within the context of the need for a level playing-field and open, rules-bound trading system that actually can also deliver climate action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 51:04<\/a>: If you think shaming [China] is important (which it could be in certain circumstances) then in some sense you are focusing on your domestic audience more so than what the collaborative undertaking would be […] If there is a lesson to be learned, it is to recognise the intrinsic connectivity between domestic action and ambition internationally and how they feed back and forth from each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1:01:46<\/a>: <\/strong>We must focus on the big picture. Not just on the governmental relationship but also on all of the different connective tissues, whether it\u2019s the subnational actors, businesses, NGOs or think-tanks that are going to be a very big part of framing the next generation of solutions and also US\u2013China relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This video is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives<\/a> licence. For a copy of the video file, please contact: multimedia@dialogue.earth<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Expert panellists debate how the world\u2019s two biggest emitters can rebuild their relationship on climate action<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":60090836,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[761],"tags":[569,580,585],"country":[],"class_list":["post-68702","video","type-video","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate","tag-negotiations","tag-policy","tag-renewables"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLi Shuo:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Alex Wang:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bernice Lee:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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