Revitalizing a Global Fight Climate Change Together

Authors: Xu Guoying & Zhao Qingtong

Since the 1960s, the effects of global climate change have alarmed the peoples over the world. It includes unprecedented stronger storms, floods, droughts, landslides, rising temperatures and glacier melting. The nature is becoming more fragile, as Harvard scientist James McCarthy warned, “Now the Earth is populated with 6 billion people and natural and human systems that provide us with food, fuel, and fibre are strongly influenced by climate.” It does not matter whether carbon dioxide is placed in the atmosphere from China or the United States, it still affects global change. Truly as climate change accelerates, future change may not occur as smoothly as it has in the past. Despite considerable public attention, for example, the Vienna Conventions in 1985, FCCC in 1994 and the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, still less impressive progress has been made in reducing CO2 emissions globally.

Considering this, world leaders from some 70 countries staged a virtual gathering on December 12 to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the Paris climate accord, the international agreement to curb global warming, with a view to drawing pledges by countries to increase efforts in tackling global climate challenges. As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, the world needs to reduce global emissions by 45% by 2030 compared to 2010 levels and urged world leaders to “take the right decisions” to push their countries towards carbon neutrality. As a response to Guterres’ address, the president of the European Council Charles Michel reiterated the importance of international cooperation in fighting climate change. Chinese President Xi announced China’s determined commitments to combatting climate change along with other countries. The U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson also pointed to the global efforts in developing coronavirus vaccines as an example of the strength of countries working together. As he said, “Together we can use scientific advances to protect our entire planet, our biosphere, against a challenge far worse, far more destructive than coronavirus.”The world indeed needs the golden thread of climate action to weave through every international gathering next year, including the G7, the G20 and other meetings, in order to fight climate change much more efficiently and substantially.

More encouraging, although the administration of President Trump, who withdrew the U.S. from the Paris accord, wasn’t represented at the meeting. U.S. President-elect Joe Biden promised to rejoin the Paris Agreement in a written statement sent shortly before the meeting started. As the United States is returning to the Paris Agreement, the international community expects that the U.S. will commit to carbon neutrality, simply because others have done in the past days and weeks, countries such as China, Japan and Brazil. Yes, the countries that are party to the Paris Agreement are required to submit their updated targets to the United Nations by the end of this year.

As the largest developing country and a rising power as well, China vows to lower its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by over 65 percent from the 2005 level, increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 25 percent, increase the forest stock volume by 6 billion cubic meters from the 2005 level, and bring its total installed capacity of wind and solar power to over 1.2 billion kilowatts. As a matter of fact, China has called for the global commitments to work towards a range of issues, including climate change, marine ecosystem protection, sustainable land use, restoring migration routes and many other areas to prevent the alarming scale of biodiversity loss in the world. This is a recognition of the crisis and an expression of the need for a profound re-commitment from world leaders to take urgent action. Yet, pragmatically with the world facing the coronavirus pandemic and failing to meet the 2020 biodiversity targets agreed previously, this summit was seen as an opportunity for world leaders to revise their goals and commitment to protect nature. As they have agreed, the challenges of climate change and COVID-19 show us the importance of biodiversity conservation and sustainable use to ensure a more secure, inclusive and resilient world. To that end, they must develop and agree on a shared plan together for the biodiversity and climate negotiations scheduled for next year, to secure a carbon-neutral, nature-positive and equitable future for all. There has never been a more crucial time to act for nature than now, as the UN chief Guterres warned, people over the world must stop a “suicidal” war on nature.

Historically the first convention on global climate change was adopted in 1992. Now the question remains “Can global cooperation succeed in a combating climate change? At its root, the answer to our puzzle is quite simple and plain. From a realistic point of view, each country would like to benefit from a cleaner environment but would also like others to bear the costs of protecting environmental quality. Given this, all countries share the benefits of a healthy atmosphere and all face private costs in changing individual behavior. Accordingly, all countries have attempted to free ride on one another, hoping to reap the benefits of a greener environment without having to give up our current lifestyle. For example, the United States and Australia remain the only two industrialized countries that have declined to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Astonishingly, they even question climate change science and seriousness of the predicted impacts of global warming, maintaining that undertaking emission reductions would harm their economies, and also arguing that Protocol is flawed because it does not require the major developing countries like China to undertake mandatory emission measures.

The next problem of collective action is compounded by the distributional consequences of alternative policy solutions, especially in the case of global climate change. For example, hydrocarbon fuels are the life blood of modern economies, and the interests who would lose from any seminal policy-changing are large and politically powerful. Even nowadays these vested interests have played upon the basic incentive of all actors to free rise to block any policy change. Due to this, international institutions are expected to play a role in facilitating and codifying cooperation in global climate change. Negotiations have occurred necessarily among global leaders who have reached the agreements and the consensuses in order to use them as the efficient legal tools.

In light of the analysis above, some countries, such as Japan, Canada, France and the U.K., recently declared a “climate emergency” and pledged to make its public sector carbon neutral by 2025.In September, China also publicly committed to bring carbon emissions to a peak by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. Since the presidential race in the US is over fundamentally, John Kerry signaled Washington’s seriousness about climate shortly after being tapped by President-elect Joe Biden to serve as U.S. envoy on climate, a new cabinet-level post.  As he said, “America will soon have a government that treats the climate crisis as the urgent national security threat it is.” In addition, the UN is urging countries around the world to take more aggressive actions to match their commitments to the global climate change. In fact, although the pandemic is still the biggest concern to many people in the world in 2020, for millions in climate vulnerable places, the climate emergency remains the biggest threat and sadly there is no simple vaccine to fix the climate.

In order to show China is a responsible country in the world affairs, Beijing announced more new measures to fight climate change and stressed the important role of “solidarity, cooperation and confidence.” First, in term of the climate challenge, China argues that no one can be aloof and unilateralism will get us nowhere. Second, the COVID-19 pandemic which has affected over 50 million people globally, international community needs to work together to combat these natural disasters in terms of both virus and climate.”All countries need to maximize actions in light of their respective national circumstances and capabilities,” Xi said, calling on the developed countries to scale up support for developing countries in the financing, technology and capacity building. Only by upholding multilateralism, unity and cooperation can we deliver shared benefits and win-win for all nations.

For sure, the Prisoner’s dilemma that exists at the individual level is easily reproduced at the international level with the same consequences. The United States, as the world’s largest source of greenhouse gases, is unwilling to take an initiative to control its own emissions in the absence of a global solution. As former U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman (2006) stated, “We are a small contributor to the overall problems when you look at the rest of the world, so it’s really got to be a global solution agreed by all other countries.” In contrast, as the largest developing country and the second-largest economy in the world, China has been striving to coordinate economic growth and environmental protection and committed to the global fight against climate change. China has persistently exceeded its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions by 2030 under the Paris agreement, thanks to its efforts to cut growth in energy use and reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Now Beijing vows to continue making new progress in building an ecological civilization, optimize the development and protection of territorial space, and achieve notable results in green transformation of production and lifestyle.

By the end of 2020, the great news is that President-elect Biden reiterated his campaign pledge that his administration will cut U.S. emissions to net zero “no later than 2050.” He goes further saying that the United States will engage closely with the activists, including young people, who have continued to sound the alarm and demand change from those in power. It is quite clear that under a Biden-Harris administration, the U.S. will be back working with other countries around the world to ensure realizing those goals for the sake of the world and future generations. The paradoxes of collective action are every bit as important for countries as for individuals. After all, together, the world never fails.

Xu Guoying
Xu Guoying
Xu Guoying, PhD in the study of Foreign Affairs