US climate chief says fraught relations with China spell ‘serious trouble’ for efforts to achieve goals
- ‘If climate becomes … one of the weapons in the bilateral back and forth, we’re cooked,’ John Kerry, the US special presidential envoy for climate, says
- Kerry says that China and Russia are not moving quickly enough on climate goals, while acknowledging roadblocks in the US
Climate cooperation between the United States and China is more fraught now than it was just months ago, due to deepening bilateral frictions that threaten to leave the world in “serious trouble”, Washington’s chief climate envoy warned on Wednesday.
Cooperation on ways to limit climate change is “harder now because some of the differences of opinion between our countries have been hardened and sharpened, and that makes the diplomacy more complicated”, John Kerry, the US special presidential envoy for climate, said.
“If climate becomes one of the tools, one of the weapons in the bilateral back and forth, we’re cooked, we’re in serious trouble,” said Kerry, speaking at a virtual event hosted by the Washington-based Center for Global Development.
Against that backdrop, Kerry urged the US and China to keep the climate issue separated from other issues, stressing that both countries – along with the rest of the world – stood to suffer the consequences of rapidly melting ice caps.