Advertisement
Opinion | On climate action, the US and China have chosen Sunnylands over the badlands – but is it enough?
- As global warming intensifies, the only alternative to destruction is cooperation, as shown by the US-China landmark Sunnylands climate accord ahead of COP28. But where is the money to fund such plans?
Reading Time:4 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
In Hong Kong, where the Asia Global Dialogue is held, headlines from two newspapers show how we can inhabit parallel mental worlds despite living on one planet.
Advertisement
The New York Times had two columnists on page one: Tom Friedman on how “It’s time for a Biden peace plan” and Peter Goodman on how “Two partners in the global economy are splitting up”. In the Opinion section, Farah Stockman, a member of the Times editorial board, bid “Farewell to the US-China golden age”.
Contrast this with China Daily, whose front page was about Chinese President Xi Jinping being “warmly welcomed” in San Francisco, and his vision to drive Asia-Pacific growth, with a leading article on the importance of the Sunnylands statement on US-China climate cooperation ahead of the COP28 UN climate change conference in Dubai.
One newspaper took an “us vs them” view. The other looked for cooperation and consensus. You be the judge of who is right in this messed-up world.
Writing about the Israel-Gaza war, Friedman framed America’s choices as binary: “We will either have to become captives of Netanyahu’s strategy – which could take us all down with him – or articulate our own American vision for how the Gaza war must end.”
Advertisement
Yet the real existential threat facing the world is not war, but how climate heating – and the natural disasters stemming from the human excesses that breed the conditions for our mutually assured destruction – is accelerating human extinction. COP28, therefore, is vital to all our futures.
Advertisement