Without massive amounts of long-term “patient” capital – which only institutional investors can muster – it will be impossible to transform energy systems fast enough to mitigate the risk of ecological, economic, and social disaster.

Despite the concerns attached to blockchain and its fairly extensive energy use, the world’s two largest economies have found environmentally-friendly potential in this new technology.

As the world speculates on the immense damage the escalating U.S.-China trade war could bring to international economic sphere, these tensions could be putting the Earth itself at risk of destruction.

The challenges China faces in combating climate change are similar to those the U.S. faced.

Whilst Trump’s “America First” policy created the largest monthly budget surplus since 1968 (at $214 billion) in April this year and cut unemployment to below 4% for the first time since 2000, US credibility may have been permanently hurt.

Contemporary discourse around climate change, energy consumption and geopolitics typically depicts China either as a 21st century redeemer or as an inevitable tragedy. Both of these narratives tend towards the extreme.

At the 19th Party Congress, President Xi announced that China had “taken a driving seat in international cooperation to respond to climate change.” But as much as Beijing has done to get its own house in order domestically, it has hasn’t always let concern over climate change inform its trade policy or diplomacy. And while China is becoming a cleaner, lower-emissions country at a national level, it has done so by "outsourcing" emissions, both internally and overseas.

A Chinese official said Tuesday that his country still wants to cooperate with the U.S. on climate change and hopes an upcoming meeting on the issue in Germany

Recently, the world has witnessed larger typhoons and bigger hurricanes in size and frequency. As climate risks are escalating, efforts to contain collateral damage are eroding. What is needed is joint U.S.-Chinese climate leadership.

Globalization is always an evolving process, with inevitable ups and downs and not moving in a linear fashion. Despite populist reservations in the US and UK, the international community has become intertwined and interdependent, thanks to global free trade and investment. Cooperation to tackle global challenges will continue while more efforts will address the “global governance deficiency” in promoting social justice and fairness such the widening gap between rich and poor both domestically and among nations.