US Climate Envoy John Kerry will travel to China and Japan next week to meet with top climate officials in the lead-up to a pivotal United Nations climate conference in Glasgow in November.
Kerry will be in Japan on August 31, then China from September 1-3, according to a person familiar with the plans.
This is Kerry’s second trip to China, where he is expected to continue discussions with his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua and attempt to persuade officials there to accelerate their timeline to decarbonize their economies and move away from coal.
Kerry will separately meet with Japan’s Environment Minister Shinjirō Koizumi to discuss areas of cooperation between the two countries.
China poses one of Kerry’s biggest challenges heading into Glasgow. The world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, China has committed to transitioning to net-zero emissions by 2060, and is aiming to peak its emissions before 2030. China’s 2060 decarbonization target is a decade behind those of the US and European Union.
“None of this works without China really cranking up, and China is not cranking up right now, and that’s a big problem,” former US Climate Envoy Todd Stern, who served in the Obama administration, told CNN. “They have said they will hit their peak before 2030. That’s kind of small beer, compared to what’s needed.”
The US is the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and Kerry has been clear he thinks rapid decarbonization in both countries is the only way to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures and stave off the worst impacts of global warming.
President Joe Biden has also been vocal in his desire to outcompete China when it comes to clean energy and electric vehicles.
“On climate, cooperation is the only way to break free from the world’s current mutual suicide pact,″ Kerry said in a July speech in London. “President Biden and President Xi have both stated uneq2uivocally that each will cooperate on climate despite other consequential differences. America needs China to succeed in slashing emissions. China needs America to do the same.″
While Kerry has a good working relationship with Zhenhua, who was also the top Chinese climate official during the 2015 Paris Agreement negotiations, the broader relationship between the two countries has deteriorated over issues including trade and China’s human rights abuses.
One of Kerry’s top deputies recently told lawmakers that the special envoy’s climate diplomacy with China has largely focused on areas of cooperation.
“We’re seeking ones where the US and China are not competing in the same way because we don’t see that’s going to play well for either of us,” Kerry’s senior adviser Dr. Jonathan Pershing told lawmakers at a July hearing. “I don’t think we want to be in the position where we lose our technological advantage or we cede commercial opportunities – that has not gone well. At the same time there are clearly areas of good practice we could share.”
Pershing said climate talks with China have also avoided topics human rights abuses, including a troubling report that solar panel production in the country’s Xinjiang region is being built with Uyghur forced labor.
Pershing told lawmakers that climate and China’s human rights abuses are “things we distinguish, and we can separate out.”
A previous version of this story understated how quickly China aims to peak its greenhouse gas emissions. This story has been updated to reflect China’s policy, which is to peak emissions before 2030.
