The US President accuses China and Russia of unwillingness to commit to climate protection.
(Photo: imago images / ZUMA Press)
Berlin For years, the power dynamic between the USA and China has determined progress in international climate protection. The world’s two largest emitters of climate-damaging greenhouse gas emissions tend to stalk each other and refuse excessive zest for action, especially when the other side demands it. The result was climate protection in homeopathic doses, including failed climate summits like the one in Copenhagen. When Washington and Beijing, together with almost 200 other countries, signed the Paris Climate Agreement at the end of 2015, it was considered a diplomatic miracle.
It is undisputed that too little has happened since then. Despite all negotiations, despite all warnings to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius as far as possible in a pre-industrial comparison, emissions are rising. The world is on a 2.7 degree course.
A trend reversal is long overdue, the declaration of the 20 largest economic nations after their meeting at the weekend in Rome is therefore more than pathetic. The fact that China’s head of state Xi Jinping is staying away from Glasgow does not suggest that the giant empire, the world’s largest CO2 emitter, intends to tighten its previous announcements in the next few days. The peak of CO2 emissions before 2030, greenhouse gas neutral by 2060 and thus ten years later than the European Union – it will probably stay that way for the time being.
And yet it is an unworthy spectacle what the United States, just back in the ranks of climate protectors, is offering at the beginning of the world climate conference in Glasgow. The fact that US President Joe Biden accuses China and Russia of a lack of willingness to commit to climate protection will hardly motivate the two countries to provide more incentive.
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Russia reacts no differently than the People’s Republic. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has already made it clear that the country is currently unwilling to enter into international commitments that go beyond the well-known goal: CO2 neutrality no later than 2060.
It is true that China and Russia could be more ambitious. The emerging country India also needs to step up. The list goes on. In view of the drama of climate change, however, it is time to pull together instead of maneuvering key players into a blockade.
How did Chancellor Angela Merkel say at the end of the G20 meeting in Rome? “Somehow everyone understood that everyone lives on one planet”. That gives hope.
More: Higher ambitions and more money: How the world climate conference can still be a success after the vague G20 resolutions