Why Obama’s Challenge to China on Climate Change Is Too Little, Too Late

At the United Nations Climate Summit ... in New York, President Obama issued a strong challenge to the Beijing leadership.  China and the US “have a special responsibility to lead” on climate change, he said.  “It’s what big nations have to do.”  Obama said he had talked directly with Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli at the summit (President Xi Jinping did not attend) and urged the two countries to work together to cut global greenhouse gas emissions.
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The challenge that Obama should present to Beijing is to insist that China follow through on its commitments in a transparent and measurable way.  Indeed, while China’s climate targets look good on paper, many of its policies have not been implemented satisfactorily, and others have backfired completely.

Increasingly, there are stories of factories evading energy-efficiency targets.  According to a recent report by the World Resources Institute, “Weak GHG data quality has become a major obstacle for China’s low-carbon development in the long-run.”  The US government has questioned whether China has the “institutional capacity” and “political will” to publish accurate statistics.

China has come a long way, but it needs to go farther, especially as the pressure mounts. China has been the world’s largest emitter of GHGs since 2007.  But China’s low per capita emissions—just one-seventh of US per capita emissions in 2007, and still just a little less than half of US emissions by 2013—have always given that country a back door in the climate blame game.  Moreover, how can we blame China when nearly one-quarter of its emissions can be directly linked to products made for export—many of them to the United States?  And, finally, how can we solely blame China when we also know that most of the emissions in the atmosphere now came from the United States and Europe and their respective industrial revolutions?

But China cannot hide behind these facts much longer.  A shocking new report, released this month, shows that China’s per capita emissions are now higher than those of the European Union.  This statistic alone could change China’s role in the international effort to reverse climate change.

China is indeed on the big stage now.  But if Obama wants to present the United States as a reliable partner with China on climate change, he needs to recognize what China has already done.  And Obama must realize that China’s biggest challenge is not making targets, but following through on them.

It’s important to get the diplomacy with China right.  The United States and China are the world’s largest emitters and, as Obama says, the two must work together if there is to be any progress.  Both countries are models for the rest of the world—if they don’t act, no one will.  And if the two giants don’t change course, as The New York Times grimly warns, “the earth could warm by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit above the preindustrial level, which would likely be incompatible with human civilization in its current form.”

Why Obama’s Challenge to China on Climate Change Is Too Little, Too Late