The G-20 summit of industrialized and emerging-market nations kicks off Sunday in the southern Chinese city of Hangzhou, China.
Ahead of the conference, President Barack Obama will sit down with his Chinese counterpart President Xi Jinping.
Amid international tensions — over China’s claims on the South China Sea and activist pressure on the US to address China’s human rights record — one bright spot in US-China relations during this visit is likely to be agreements on climate change.
At or before the conference, Obama and Xi may announce that the two countries have taken the final steps needed to accept the international climate change agreement crafted in Paris last December.
These two superpowers issuing their final acceptance is key in ensuring the Paris agreement goes into effect.
“It is unthinkable that we would solve this problem unless the US and China are part of the solution,” said Orville Schell, head of the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society.
Together, the two countries emit about 40 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide.
More nations will still need to accept the Paris agreement after the US and China do for it to go into effect. To be exact, at least 55 countries representing at least 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions need to give their final ratification or acceptance for it to enter into force.
The White House hopes that will happen before the end of the year.
But the US and China accepting the agreement themselves will still be a big deal, both because they’re responsible for a large chunk of global emissions and because of the shift that move will represent.
Schell points out that even five or six years ago, China saw climate change very differently than it does today.
“China tended to view climate change as sort of a plot foisted on them by the West to slow down their development,” Schell said — development the country felt it had a right to.
“The West, after all, had its industrial revolution, why shouldn’t China?”
Schell credits an amped up US focus on China and the environment after failed 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen with helping change the country’s thinking.
“Because of the tremendous efforts that the United States made through universities, through national labs, through environmental NGOs, China did slowly come around and began to recognize this was a threat to China too,” Schell said.
China and the US then became tandem leaders in the international push for countries to agree to curb carbon emissions.
An agreement to cut emissions between the word's two largest economies announced by Obama and Xi in China in 2014 paved the way for an international deal nearly 200 countries adopted in Paris in December of 2015.
As the deal inches through national and United Nations protocols toward implementation, it’s not clear whether this tag-team approach toward limiting carbon emissions will continue past January.
Climate collaboration hinges on election
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has said she would largely continue Obama’s climate policies.
But Republican nominee Donald Trump has said he doesn’t believe in man-made climate change.
Trump tweeted this in November 2012: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
Trump has since said that was a joke, but last December he told Fox News that he thought climate change is a “big scam for a lot of people to make a lot of money,” and singled out China as a beneficiary.
“China is eating our lunch because they don’t partake in all the rules and regulations that we do,” Trump told Bill O’Reilly in December 2015,“and then they compete because they’re spending a lot less money to build their products.”
In an energy speech in May, Trump pledged to “cancel” the Paris agreement. A single world leader couldn’t do that, but if Trump becomes president, he could pull the US out.
Which begs the question: If the US reneges on its promises, would China do the same?
Probably not, said Alvin Lin, climate and energy policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council’s China program.
“Policymakers in China are watching what’s happening in the US,” Lin said. “But really China is committed to fulfilling its goals under the Paris agreement regardless of what happens in the US or any other country. This is really for their own benefit.”
Lin said choking smog in China’s major cities and money to be made in green energy are motivation enough to cut pollution.
“China has the world’s largest wind and solar industries; they are really pushing on electric vehicles, these are all sectors they see as future growth areas,” Lin said. “I don’t think they’re going to be turning around just because of the results of the election.”
But US leadership will inevitably have other impacts on China’s carbon emissions.
China and the US work together on electric vehicles, energy-efficient buildings, and carbon capture techniques, according to Ranping Song from the World Resources Institute.
Song argues if US support for that work drops off, “that [research] may actually slow down a few years down the road.”
Meanwhile, scientists say countries can’t afford any slowdown in efforts to cut carbon pollution.
In fact, emissions must continue to reduce in the upcoming years in order to prevent the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.