How to solve the climate problem? The trap of American discourse needs to be broken first globally | climate change | America

From July 16th to 19th, the US President's special envoy on climate issues, John Kerry, visited China.

This is the third American official to visit China in the past month. During these four days, Wang Yi, member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and Director of the Central Foreign Affairs Office, Premier Li Qiang of the State Council, and Vice President Han Zheng successively met with Kerry. During this period, Kerry also had three consecutive days of talks with China's Special Envoy for Climate Change Affairs, Xie Zhenhua.

During the period of the China US meeting, the world was shrouded in high temperatures. The task of addressing climate change is arduous, and there is much that can be discussed between China and the United States.

As stated in the press release released by the Chinese side, both sides unanimously believe that climate change is a common challenge facing humanity, and it is of great significance for the two countries to work together to address this challenge.

However, in the past few years, the United States has continuously intensified its efforts to contain and suppress China, especially in the past six months. The provocative actions of the United States have further led to the suspension of climate change negotiations between China and the United States, and the international climate agenda has also faced difficulties in advancing due to the influence of the unilateral narrative of the United States.

In the meeting between Wang Yi and Kerry, the Chinese side also made it clear:

The cooperation on climate change between China and the United States has enormous potential, and it cannot be separated from the understanding and support of the two peoples, as well as the overall environment of China US relations.

With the "big climate" of Sino US relations being disrupted by the competitive thinking of the United States, especially since the beginning of this year, the United States has been using various high-sounding names to contain and suppress China. Will China and the United States fall into the same narrative when discussing the "microclimate" issue? Will the United States use climate governance as a pretext to implement containment measures? This is a common concern among many Chinese people when they hear about climate issues between China and the United States.

To achieve effective communication between China and the United States on climate issues, the first step is to break through the discourse trap set by the United States.

First, let's take a look at what the United States said about Kerry's visit to China.

Before Kerry set off, the United States had already stated the most important goal of this trip: to lay a good foundation for this year's United Nations Climate Change Conference.

In recent years, international climate negotiations have not been progressing smoothly. Last year, in the first week of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, negotiations were deadlocked.

Why can't we talk about it together? To answer this question, it is necessary to understand the current process of global climate negotiations.

The international community's joint response to climate change has a basic framework - the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted in 1992. The annual United Nations Climate Change Conference is held in accordance with the requirements of the Convention to assess progress in addressing climate change.

Currently, one of the most important documents in global climate governance, the Paris Agreement, was reached more than 7 years ago at the United Nations Climate Change Conference. At this conference, countries ultimately set the important goal of controlling the global average temperature rise within 2 degrees Celsius and striving to limit it to within 1.5 degrees Celsius. China and the United States played an important role in coordinating the concerns of developing and developed countries.

However, over the past seven years, the United States has retreated and advanced on the multilateral climate agenda, and recently has been constantly provoking China's bottom line principles, causing many difficulties in communication among countries and global climate negotiations.

So how did this US government return to climate governance?

This issue was clearly stated in the Executive Order to Address Domestic and Foreign Climate Crises signed by Biden in 2021, stating that climate issues are "at the center of US foreign policy and national security.".

How to understand this "center"? Let's first take a look at the main departments mentioned in this administrative order:

| | The Ministry of Finance focuses on climate related financial risk management and collaborates with the Secretary of State and others to develop climate investment and financing plans.

| | The Ministry of Commerce coordinates with the Ministry of National Defense to assess the security impacts of climate change.

The International Development Agency, in collaboration with the Secretary of State and the Ministry of Finance, focuses on climate investment and financing, as well as the global carbon sequestration market.

| | The Ministry of National Defense incorporates the impact of climate change into modeling, simulation, and military analysis.

| | Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US military, incorporating the security impacts of climate change into defense strategies, risk assessments by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other processes.

| | Director of National Intelligence, responsible for writing a national intelligence assessment report on the impact of climate change on national and economic security.

| | The Department of Energy, in collaboration with the Secretary of State and others, promotes innovation and deployment of clean energy technologies.

| | Department of Homeland Security, considering the impact of climate change on the Arctic, along the US border, and critical national functions.

From these division of labor, it can be seen that although it includes controlling the global average temperature rise, what is more obvious is linking security issues with climate issues, not only allowing a large number of military security departments to assess climate impacts, but also closely coordinating security departments with other business departments.

Yu Hongyuan, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of International Studies, pointed out that global climate governance should be divided into topics within and outside the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Climate security, green financing, and other issues are outside the Convention, especially those related to economic security, and everyone's understanding will be very different.

That is to say, although the United States claims to address global climate change, its actual behavior is deviating from the framework of the Convention on Climate Change. Beyond the climate goals of the Paris Agreement, the United States is avoiding the heavy and focusing on the security impacts of climate change.

The Supply Chain Security Strategy for the United States to Achieve Clean Energy Transition, released last year, aims to control the supply chain of green industries through climate issues and maintain the country's economic security through trade protection measures.

According to the logic of the United States, it needs a supply chain for clean energy transformation, which requires expanding its domestic manufacturing capacity and avoiding excessive dependence on a particular country in the supply chain.

For this reason, especially in areas such as photovoltaics, rare earths, and lithium batteries that are highly dependent on China, the United States is using trade protection tools to promote decoupling and chain breaking.

In order to completely cut off ties with China, the United States even imposed tariffs on solar panels imported from Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia, claiming that their solar panels were manufactured by Chinese factories.

Once the impact of decoupling and chain breaking occurs, the energy crisis will quickly manifest, and the United States itself is no exception.

With the decoupling and disconnection from China's photovoltaic industry, the domestic photovoltaic industry in the United States has entered a large-scale stagnation. Last June, when oil and gas prices skyrocketed and electricity supply and demand were tight in the United States, the United States had to announce exemptions from import tariffs on solar panels in these four countries to boost the photovoltaic industry back on track - but this measure was only temporary and lasted for only 24 months.

At a press conference at the end of Kerry's visit to China on the 19th, Tan asked Kerry on-site whether the US sanctions against China have affected China US new energy cooperation? Regarding this, Kerry promised to fully convey these concerns to the US government after returning to his home country.

In addition to emphasizing supply chain security, climate issues have now been incorporated into the United States' national security strategy, and this administration has mentioned climate more frequently in its national security strategy text than in the past two.

On climate issues, the United States prioritizes domestic security over multilateral agendas. This kind of US priority discourse trap will naturally hinder multilateral negotiations, and falling into such a trap will seriously harm the interests of other countries.

Faced with the unilateral narrative of the United States, China's attitude during Kerry's visit to China was also expressed very clearly:

We must practice multilateralism and adhere to the goals and principles set forth in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Paris Agreement.

On the one hand, it prioritizes domestic security over the multilateral climate agenda, and on the other hand, the United States is also calculating on the multilateral agenda.

Xu Huaqing, who has participated in international climate negotiations multiple times, mentioned that in the negotiation arena, the United States claims to stand at the "moral high ground" to promote global climate governance.

A typical action is to constantly propose new emission reduction responsibilities, but there is a difference in emphasizing shared responsibility without emphasizing emission reduction responsibilities.

Take methane, which has been continuously promoting public awareness in the United States in recent years. During Kerry's visit to China, methane was repeatedly mentioned in meetings with various parties.

Methane is the second largest greenhouse gas in emissions, second only to carbon dioxide, and its greenhouse effect is dozens of times that of carbon dioxide. Therefore, it is essential to address climate change and control methane emissions.

In fact, there is a consensus between developing and developed countries that methane emissions reduction is necessary. The question is, what path and standards should be followed to advance?

Developed countries, led by the United States, particularly hope to reach a "global methane emission reduction commitment" at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, setting a countdown to reducing methane emissions by 30% by 2030 compared to 2020.

To achieve this emission reduction target, a natural question arises: how to design a common monitoring framework to quantify the effectiveness of emission reduction?

At the end of last year, the world's first publicly available global methane monitoring data system, the methane warning and response system, had just been launched. The initial funding for this system comes from the European Commission, the US government, the Global Methane Center, and the Bezos Earth Fund, mainly from developed countries.

That is to say, currently the internationally available methane monitoring methods and data are basically still in the hands of developed countries, and for developing countries, the imbalance among them is huge.

The emission reduction standards that the United States is eager to promote are formulated from the perspective of the development status and position of developed countries, without better considering the development needs of developing countries.

When the United States promoted the "Global Methane Reduction Commitment" at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, China once pointed out that developing countries generally have weak basic data, lack of monitoring technology and effective measures in non carbon dioxide greenhouse gas control.

It is unrealistic to let developing countries run before they have learned how to walk.

Therefore, if we truly want to form the maximum joint effort to address climate change, when establishing the ambition of methane reduction, these practical difficulties of developing countries must be taken into consideration and taken into account. This requires developed countries to provide more support and assistance to developing countries.

Ironically, among all developed countries, the United States has the worst performance and the largest arrears of climate aid funds to developing countries.

The reason for proposing such assistance is due to the historical debt owed by developed countries in emissions reduction.

Zhang Yuyan, member of the academic department of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out that greenhouse gas emissions should be viewed separately from the perspectives of increment and stock. From an incremental perspective, in the past two to three decades, developing countries have indeed emitted a significant portion of the Earth's greenhouse gas increment. However, from a stock perspective, developed countries had already started emitting greenhouse gases a hundred years ago.

In the past two hundred years, the United States has emitted over 500 billion tons of greenhouse gases, while China's emissions are only more than half of it.

Developed countries enjoy the development benefits brought about by these high emissions, so in terms of assuming the responsibility of emission reduction, they naturally need to differ from developing countries. That is to say, in the current stage, they should first assume greater responsibility for emission reduction, and then drive developing countries.

The reality is that the United States is trying to stand on the high ground of discourse power, wanting to unilaterally turn the responsibility that goes beyond the current stage of development of most countries into a shared responsibility, while also avoiding the differentiated responsibilities it needs to bear at this stage.

Some developing countries are currently fulfilling responsibilities that even surpass developed countries in some aspects.

China has supported an annual economic growth rate of 6.2% with an average annual energy consumption growth rate of 3%, making it one of the countries with the fastest reduction in energy consumption intensity in the world. Moreover, China has contributed 25% of the world's newly added green area since the beginning of this century.

Action is the most powerful language and the most powerful explanation for leaders.

Of course, the United States also reduces emissions on its own. The problem is that, in fulfilling this basic responsibility, the United States has not forgotten to incorporate tricks into it.

Regarding this, extracting the most relevant speeches of the Biden administration on "climate" in public over the past year, based on the high-frequency words used in the speeches, some clues can be found.

In the sequence of high-frequency words, the top few are climate, energy, cleanliness, and emissions. That is to say, for the core issue of reducing carbon emissions, the United States believes that promoting the transition to clean energy is the most important method.

Why vigorously promote green transformation? Continue to look at the next set of words: global, national, leader, support.

That is to say, climate governance is not only for the sake of climate governance itself, but more importantly, it is to maintain the United States' leadership position in the world through climate governance.

The Inflation Reduction Act, which involves high subsidies, is a concrete manifestation and is hailed as the largest climate investment in US history.

According to the bill, the United States plans to raise $369 billion over 10 years to invest in subsidies for new energy and reduce carbon emissions. Specifically, looking at these subsidies, they adopt obvious discriminatory measures to exclude foreign enterprises from the scope of subsidies for production outside of North America.

Once the bill was introduced, it caused a lot of dissatisfaction worldwide, including allies of the United States, especially Germany, which focuses on the automotive industry. Its new energy vehicles faced unfair competition in the market. The European Union continues to protest and says that the United States is using the pretext of "promoting green transformation" to launch unfair competition methods without restraint.

Another perspective to see through whether the development of green technology in the United States is aimed at addressing climate change is to examine the implementation of green technology transfer in the United States.

Even in the years before the Trump administration, when climate cooperation between China and the United States became closer, the United States did not fulfill the signed green energy technology transfer to China.

Subsequently, the United States concocted the concept of "mandatory technology transfer", claiming that "the United States opened its doors to scientific research, but China stole the technology.".

Actually?

It is precisely thanks to China's large market that American companies can effectively recover innovation costs and provide follow-up support for new technology research and development by transferring some technology, which is a common operating model of multinational corporations.

In the past month, some members of the US Congress have been brewing to prevent the renewal of the US China Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement, which is about to expire next month, involving multiple global public issues such as health, climate change, and ecological protection.

In the meeting between Li Qiang and Kerry, China specifically mentioned the issue of sharing development achievements, and pointed out that developed countries should provide more technical support to developing countries.

In the face of climate change, a common issue for all mankind, to achieve our common goal, we need to appreciate the beauty of each and every one, and share the same beauty.

In terms of transformation, China has built the world's largest clean power generation system, and its installed capacity in hydropower, wind power, and solar power also ranks first in the world. China did not consider blockades and sanctions, but chose to share this number one with the world.

As early as four years ago, China and the United Nations Development Programme jointly established the South South Cooperation Center for Technology Transfer to carry out renewable energy technology transfer projects for the least developed countries.

These projects not only provide electricity, but also offer a large number of employment and livelihood improvement opportunities.

The South South cooperation among developing countries has taken the lead in breaking free from the shackles of developed countries enclosing technology, and has also revealed a new light of jointly addressing the climate crisis.

Looking back at the numerous discourse traps in the United States, we need to break them in order to further form the maximum joint force to address climate change and contribute to the common issue that all humanity must face.

Dealing with climate change is not something others want us to do, but something we need to do ourselves.

On this basis, the task of addressing climate change is arduous and requires global countries to strengthen coordination and gather consensus. Faced with a common crisis, it is necessary for everyone to discuss and act together.

Keep going and never stop, the future is promising. We are in an era full of challenges and hope. When humans protect nature in a friendly way, the rewards of nature are generous; When humans violently plunder nature, the punishment of nature is also merciless.

China's ecological protection is not about using environmental protection and climate concepts as tools, but we deeply understand that harmonious coexistence between humans and nature is essential for sustainable development and the continuation of civilization.

We are willing to explore with the world the possibility of overcoming crises with such a Chinese concept.