With election of Trump, ‘curtain has fallen’ over Sino-US cooperation over climate
Continued American support for Paris deal appears doubtful, Chinese environmental experts say
The election of Donald Trump as US president could effectively put an end to the honeymoon period of Sino-US cooperation on climate change, which saw the world’s two largest carbon emitters formally join the Paris accord.
Mainland experts said that although Trump’s victory was unlikely to derail China’s domestic energy and climate policies, the era of cooperation between the two nations on keeping the global temperature rise to within a safe limit was over.
Watch: Obama and Trump’s first White House meeting
It is a heavy blow to the Paris Agreement, which has just entered into force
“The curtain has fallen with Trump’s election today,” Wu Changhua, former China director of the Climate Group, said. “It is a heavy blow to the Paris Agreement, which has just entered into force. Now we’ll need to draft a new script for global climate leadership.”
More than 100 countries, including the United States, have formally joined the pact, which seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help vulnerable countries adapt to rising seas, intensifying heat waves, desertification and other effects of a warming planet. It limits global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
China’s top negotiator Xie Zhenhua has called on Trump to “take policy stances that conform with global trends” and said China would honour its climate pledge with no strings attached.
