As the world sizzles, China says it will deal with climate its own way - The Washington Post

As world sizzles, China says it will deal with climate its own way - The Washington Post

As parts of the Northern Hemisphere reach heat close to the limits of human survival, Chinese leader Xi Jinping declared in remarks reported Wednesday that Beijing alone will decide how — and how quickly — it addresses climate change.

China would pursue its commitments “unswervingly,” but the pace of such efforts “should and must be” determined without outside interference, Xi said late Tuesday. It was a long way from the 2015 Paris climate accord when a Chinese-U.S. agreement paved the way for the international goal of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.

The urgency of living up to those ambitions has been brought into sharp focus in recent weeks by historic heat waves across China, southern Europe, the Middle East and North America. Rising average temperatures intensified by the El Niño climate pattern put 2023 well on course to be the hottest year since humanity started keeping track.

Lawmakers in Europe, meanwhile, hoping to take a break from the challenges of the war in Ukraine with the cherished tradition of the mid-July break, were met with the hellish temperatures of another heat wave that served as a scorching reminder that the climate crisis does not take a summer holiday.

Brussels’s ambitious climate plans, however, are strongly opposed by the conservatives in the European Union in a sign that the bloc remains split on how, exactly, to proceed.

Europe’s actions and those of China’s — especially how quickly it can move from coal to renewable energy — will be critical for the world’s already slim chances of meeting the Paris agreement target.

Beijing has set its own target of reversing rising carbon dioxide emissions before 2030, but it has also promised to support a global transition to clean energy by no longer building coal power plants overseas.

Xi’s message — delivered at the same time Kerry was in town — was no coincidence, according to Li Shuo, a senior policy adviser for Greenpeace East Asia. Xi was showing that “China will decide its own path in achieving carbon goals and will not be ordered about by others,” he said.

Climate negotiations between the two countries, once a rare bright spot in a fraught relationship, have increasingly been undermined by tensions over trade, technology and human rights. The talks are now a long way from the accelerated reduction of emissions that the United Nations has ruled necessary to meet the Paris climate accord goals.

Kerry spent a 12-hour day with his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, on Monday. When he saw Vice Premier Han Zheng on Wednesday, Kerry called for climate to be a “free-standing” issue, kept separate from the broader bilateral acrimony.

But many Chinese experts framed the visit as being part of a tentative diplomatic reset, following trips by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, rather than a breakthrough in climate negotiations.

China has bristled at a shift in the Biden administration’s climate approach, in which talks are supplemented by more coercive measures, like tariffs on high-emission steel and aluminum imports, to push China to move faster.

The United States was “ignoring China’s contributions and achievements in reducing emissions and blindly pressures China to make unrealistic commitments,” Chen Ying, a researcher at the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in an interview with local media.

But it isn’t just pressure from the United States that is compelling China to act.

Flash floods, sudden cold snaps and other deadly extreme weather events in recent years have raised public awareness in China of the dangers of a warming atmosphere. The government has responded with promises to improve warning systems and disaster response mechanisms to protect livelihoods, the economy and even precious historical artifacts during future crises.

But people in China are feeling the extremes this summer. Temperatures in northern parts of the country have reached searing heights in recent weeks, even as torrential rainfall and typhoons batter its southeastern shores.
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A record high of 52.2 degrees Celsius (126 Fahrenheit) was recorded Sunday in a small township in the Turpan Depression, a stretch of desert in the northwest that sinks as low as 150 meters below sea level.

At the opposite end of the country, southeastern Guangxi province issued a red alert for flooding and landslides on Tuesday as Typhoon Talim made its way inland.

Beijing’s response so far has prioritized mitigating fallout from the events themselves, rather than increasing its ambition to prevent atmospheric warming. This has environmental activists concerned that Beijing is putting energy security first, running counter to climate goals.

After last summer’s — also record-breaking — heat wave dried up reservoirs and caused power shortages from idled hydropower stations, the government has turned to coal to ensure the same doesn’t happen this year. Local authorities approved more coal power plants in 2022 than in any year since 2015.

Ensuring power supply during peak summer demand affected the welfare of every family, another vice premier, Ding Xuexiang, told one of China’s largest power providers over the weekend.

To keep the air conditioning on, providers like CHN Energy, one of the world’s largest generators of coal-fired power, have been setting daily records for supply, the Global Times, a state-run newspaper, reported on Monday.

In Europe, the latest heat wave has already seen temperatures top 104 degrees (40C) in parts of Spain, France, Italy and Greece. In Sicily, the temperature was as high as 115 degrees (46.3C).

More than 61,000 people died in heat waves across Europe last year, according to a recent study published by Nature Medicine. A study in published in May projected that the chance of what were once rare heat waves in Europe will rise as the climate warms.

As lawmakers in Brussels battle over the E.U.’s ambitious climate plans, NATO heads of state and government gathered in Vilnius, Lithuania, for a headline-making summit that all but overshadowed climate conversation.

There are signs that some Europeans want their leaders to do more, more quickly. “The suicidal temptation of denial in the face of the climate emergency clashes with unacceptable data, such as the data from last summer and what is beginning to emerge this year,” read an editorial published Wednesday in Spain’s El País.

“The need for more efficient and comprehensive prevention measures,” the editorial said, “should not be debatable.”

The question now is whether another deadly summer will lead enough Europeans to push for climate action come autumn — and if governments will respond.

Vic Chiang in Taipei, Taiwan, and Beatriz Ríos in Brussels contributed to this report.