Last week, the Biden administration launched its most ambitious initiative in climate diplomacy to date: a two-day conference with forty world leaders to spur reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. President Biden unveiled a new U.S. commitment to reduce its emissions to half of their 2005 level by 2030, a dramatic target followed by comparably ambitious commitments from Canada, Japan, Great Britain, and the European Union. South Korea also pledged to cease publicly financing coal-fired power plants, and Brazil vowed to end deforestation of the Amazon. These actions, all attributable in part to U.S. diplomacy, should be balanced against the conference’s shortcomings. Australia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, and Russia declined new, bolder emission targets, while China, the world’s largest carbon emitter and coal consumer, continues to present a complex challenge for American climate diplomacy.
Although China’s President Xi Jinping stated his country would “phase down” coal projects after 2025, China is projected to reach peak emissions in 2030 and only to achieve net-zero emissions by 2060. The PRC also appeared to condition cooperation on climate goals on U.S. acquiescence to Beijing’s controversial policies in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Nonetheless, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry expects further commitments from China before another global conference on emissions this fall. Ultimately, progress in climate diplomacy can only occur alongside a sharpening competition between the U.S. and China, the great powers of this century.
Questions and Background
- Was the Trump administration wrong to leave the Paris Agreement? Are international agreements the best way for the U.S. to address climate change?
- Where does climate change rank among U.S. national security priorities?
- The U.S. accounts for 15% of global carbon emissions, should it adopt aggressive reduction targets if other countries refuse to do the same?
- What policies can the Biden administration adopt to persuade developing countries to forego affordable but polluting power sources like coal?
How to Save the Amazon Rain Forest
Ryan Berg. The Hill. April 2o, 2021.
How the Defense Department Can Move from Abstraction to Action on Climate Change
Samuel Brannen, Sarah Ladislaw, and Lachlan Carey. War on the Rocks. March 26, 2021.
What Climate Change Will Mean for U.S. Security and Geopolitics
John Allen and Bruce Jones. Brookings Institution. February 4, 2021.