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US ‘obstructing emissions fight’
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THE US is obstructing the global fight against emissions, China said yesterday, as Beijing has vowed to go carbon neutral by 2060.
Speaking to the UN General Assembly, Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday renewed his support for the Paris climate accord and called for a green focus as the world recovers from the COVID-19 crisis, just minutes after US President Donald Trump blasted China for “rampant pollution.”
Under Trump, the United States pulled out of the agreement, blaming China for the stalled momentum on tackling global emissions. “This clearly ... seriously obstructs the progress of reducing global emissions and promoting green, low-carbon development,” China’s foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in a statement yesterday.
“What qualifications does such a country have to criticize China?” he asked, citing America’s hunger for plastics and its export of waste.
In his speech to the UN, Xi said the Paris accord “outlines the minimum steps to be taken to protect the Earth, our shared homeland, and all countries must take decisive steps to honor this agreement.” China aims to have “carbon dioxide emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060,” Xi said.
The Paris climate deal commits nations to limit global temperature rises to near pre-industrial levels through a rapid and sweeping drawdown of greenhouse gas emissions.
Frans Timmermans, the European Commission’s executive vice president responsible for the European Green Deal, on Tuesday welcomed the target set by China. “We need decisive action from every country to keep temperatures under control, tackle climate change, and keep our planet inhabitable,” Timmermans tweeted.
In addition to its embrace of global emissions-busting deals, China already feeds nearly 15 percent of its energy demands with non-fossil fuels, spokesman Wang added. China’s “installation of renewable energy stands at 30 percent of the world total,” he said.
Xi’s tone at the UN contrasted sharply with that of Trump, who called the Paris accord, negotiated by his predecessor Barack Obama, unfair to the United States.
Trump says he is standing up for US constituencies such as coal miners and has loosened environmental rules, although individual US states such as California have insisted on fighting climate change on their own.
China’s permanent representative to the United Nations Zhang Jun said that “China’s carbon dioxide emission in 2018 was 45.8 percent lower than 2005, meeting the emission reduction target two years ahead of schedule.”
China has earnestly fulfilled its obligations under the Basel Convention, and made positive contributions to global environmental governance, the envoy said.
“In contrast, the United States, as the country with the largest cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases in the world, hasn’t ratified the Kyoto Protocol and has pulled out of the Paris Agreement. It has also dissociated itself from the global system and arrangement of carbon emissions, seriously hindered the global process of emission reduction and green development,” said Zhang.
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