China and US aim to tackle climate issues

Officials from the United States and China gathered on Wednesday in Berkeley, California, putting aside national tensions to focus on a shared challenge: climate change.

California Governor Gavin Newsom emphasized the importance of open communication and trust-building in tackling the climate crisis at the event co-hosted by the California-China Climate Institute.

"It's about sharing, it's about openness, and it's about building a framework of trust," Newsom said, noting his October visit to China where he met Chinese President Xi Jinping.

"You find those areas of cooperation and agreement and you rush to develop that framework of understanding, that capacity to partner and achieve together," Newsom told the audience, including a Chinese delegation of more than 100 provincial- and city-level officials.

"I'm committed in this relationship, particularly between China and the United States," he said. "No more important bilateral relationship in the world as it relates to the issue of climate change."

Chinese Ambassador to the United States Xie Feng delivered remarks via video at the opening ceremony.

"Over the past decade and more, China-US climate cooperation has gone through ups and downs," he said. "We worked closely to bring the international community together to adopt the milestone Paris Agreement.

"Later, though, such cooperation was stalled for reasons known to all. In recent years, climate cooperation has again resumed. If we can draw any inspiration from this, it is that China-US climate cooperation is inseparable from the overall China-US relationship," he said.

"It certainly will not work if one asks for dialogue and cooperation but keeps damaging the other side's interests at the same time, or tries to build roads on one hand but keeps digging holes on the other."

Jerry Brown, former governor of California and chair of the California-China Climate Institute, said competition will not solve the climate crisis.

"The problems we face are bigger than one country ... the most important possible partnership in the world today is China and the US," Brown said. "Pure competition without cooperation will lead to disaster."

The gathering serves as a concrete step toward fulfilling the Sunnylands Statement on Enhancing Cooperation to Address the Climate Crisis, a joint commitment made by both countries during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in San Francisco in November.

President Xi and US President Joe Biden held a summit and laid out the San Francisco vision, a road map for a sound, stable and sustainable development of China-US relations. While speaking on the phone last month, the two presidents reaffirmed the importance of turning the vision into reality.

Since November's summit, a working group has been established between the two countries. Earlier this month, China's Special Envoy for Climate Change Liu Zhenmin visited the US and held climate talks with John Podesta, senior adviser to Biden on international climate policy.

The talks were "in-depth and productive" and focused on the priorities identified in the Sunnylands statement, ranging from energy transition and methane reduction to deforestation and subnational action, Podesta said in a video message.

"The US and China have to lead the way even as the overall relationship between our two countries has increasingly been characterized by competition," he said.

"We have an obligation to our citizens and the people of the world to communicate, cooperate and collaborate where we can to tackle the climate crisis."

He stressed the importance of subnational exchanges and collaboration, because local governments are the ones implementing national policies.

"For instance, with some localities in China having already peaked their emissions nearly a decade ago, we look forward to hearing more about how China's provinces and cities are accelerating progress toward their national climate targets," he said.

He specifically commended the cooperation between US and Chinese local leaders in recent years, such as the green shipping corridor between Los Angeles and Shanghai, and local and regional solutions to accelerate the deployment of clean energy in communities.

Rick Duke, deputy special envoy for climate at the US Department of State, applauded Chinese local governments' "strong targets", citing Shenzhen's achievement of converting entire fleets of buses and taxis to electric vehicles, and 27 Chinese provinces and cities signing the US-China Climate Leaders' Declaration that pledged early carbon peaking before 2030.

He mentioned promising areas for joint technological development, such as carbon capture, utilization and storage, as well as pilot projects for full-scale commercial application.

Zhao Chenxin, a member of the visiting delegation and vice-chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, emphasized the vast business opportunities arising from China's green transformation.

"China's carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals would require investments of 80 trillion yuan ($11 trillion) and 20 trillion yuan ($2.8 trillion) respectively," he said.