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WASHINGTON – Chinese President Xi Jinping announced plans to push his country’s Paris climate agreement target on Tuesday (September 22) and called for a green revolution, just minutes after U.S. President Donald Trump criticized China for “rampant pollution.”
Addressing the UN General Assembly, Xi said that China would peak in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060, the first time the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide has been has pledged to end its net contribution to climate change.
“China will increase its Nationally Determined Contributions (to the Paris agreement) by adopting more vigorous policies and measures,” Xi said, urging all countries to pursue a “green recovery of the world economy in the post-COVID era. “.
Xi used the lectern to call for multilateral action on climate change after Trump called the Paris climate agreement, with nearly 200 signatories, a unilateral agreement and criticized China for being the world’s largest source of carbon emissions.
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Todd Stern, a US climate envoy under the Obama administration who worked to broker a bilateral climate agreement with China in 2014, called the announcement an “encouraging” step.
“Today’s announcement by President Xi Jinping that China intends to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 is big and important news: the closer to 2050 the better,” he said, but said the 2030 target ” it won’t be enough “to get you on track. for the longer term goal.
The United States and China have been affected this year by extreme weather conditions such as those expected with climate change. In China, heavy rains during the summer triggered the harshest flood season in three decades, while the United States faces one of its busiest hurricane seasons at the same time as record-breaking wildfires ravage western states.
Trump has referred to climate change as a “hoax” and in 2017 he pulled the United States out of the Paris accords by establishing an international approach to the problem. Joe Biden, his Democratic presidential challenger and former vice president, has included climate change on his list of the top crises facing the United States.
Trump, who has reversed or reduced hundreds of environmental regulations, said the United States had reduced its carbon emissions more than any other country in the deal.
“Those who attack America’s exceptional environmental record while ignoring China’s rampant pollution are not interested in the environment. They just want to punish America. And I will not tolerate it,” Trump said.
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Li Shuo, an expert on climate diplomacy at Greenpeace, said that Xi’s climate promise, minutes after Trump’s speech, was “clearly a bold and well-calculated move.”
“It shows Xi’s continued interest in tapping the climate agenda for geopolitical purposes,” he said.
Although many analysts have predicted that China was already on track to reach maximum emissions by 2030, the formal announcement was well received by the European Union, which has been negotiating with China to set a carbon neutral target and announce a maximum date. The EU had been urging Beijing to advance the date to 2025.
“I welcome President Xi’s announcement that China has set a date for its CO2 emissions to peak and become carbon neutral by 2060,” said Frans Timmermans, vice president of the European Green Deal, while He added that all countries must increase their climate targets.
READ: China to promise ‘more’ on new climate pledges: government adviser
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, like Trump, used his UN speech to reject international criticism about his country’s management of the environment, since the number of fires in the Amazon is at a maximum of 10 years, while the fires in the Pantanal wetlands are the worst on record.
Environmental defenders blame Bolsonaro for emboldening illegal ranchers and land speculators who set the land on fire to increase its value for agricultural use, but said that Brazilian agriculture feeds one billion people in the world and has strong environmental protections.
“And yet we are victims of one of the most brutal disinformation campaigns about the Amazon and the Pantanal,” he said, without specifying what information was false.
