One of the highlights from the recent U.S.-China summit in Beijing was an agreement on efforts to battle climate change. China pledged to reach peak emissions by 2030, the first time the Chinese government has formally committed to an emissions cap. Beijing also set an ambitious goal of having 20 percent of China’s energy come from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030. Meanwhile, the U.S. pledged to cut U.S. emissions to 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
The general consensus regarding the deal was summed up by Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in comments to Reuters. “This is a good beginning,” Pachuria said, but it is not enough to prevent catastrophic climate change. Experts speaking to the New York Times emphasize the importance of China reaching peak emissions before 2030. Having emissions peak in 2025 would be a substantially more ambitious goal, but would be a crucial step in preventing global temperatures from rising by 2 degrees Celsius, the cut-off experts have chosen for preventing the worst effects of global warming.
While there’s certainly more that China (and the U.S., for that matter) can do, this deal signals an important shift in China’s approach to the problem of climate change. Previously, Beijing had refused to consider any concrete targets for emissions reductions because of its positions that the developed world should shoulder most of the responsibility for preventing climate change. In other words, Beijing prioritized continued growth over environmental protection (a common position, it must be said, among many governments around the world).
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