[After Berlin, Mr. Li will head to Brussels
for a summit meeting with European Union leaders, where they are expected to
announce a number of measures deepening joint cooperation on climate protection.]
By Melissa Eddy, Chris Buckley and
James Kanter
 |
|
An
unauthorized steel plant in the northern Chinese region of Inner Mongolia.
The
Paris Agreement calls on just about every country to take measures to
address
climate change. Credit Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
|
BERLIN
— As President Trump
contemplates withdrawing from a landmark agreement on global warming, Premier
Li Keqiang of China said on Thursday that his country remained committed to the
fight against climate change and to participating in efforts for a greener
world.
“China will continue to uphold its
commitments to the Paris climate agreement,” Mr. Li said. “Step by step, and
very arduously, together with other countries, we will work toward the goals set”
by global leaders in 2015.
He added that China was one of the first
countries to submit its goals for reducing emissions that contribute to the
warming of the world’s atmosphere to the United Nations, in keeping with the
premises of the international deal.
Mr. Trump said on Twitter that he would
announce his decision on whether to pull out of the Paris Agreement, which
calls on just about every country to take measures to address climate change,
at 3 p.m. on Thursday.
“China actively participated in this process
in the past years and joined or signed every agreement concerning this,” Mr. Li
said in Berlin, where he was meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“We say in China, ‘Our words count, and our
actions must be successful,’ and China will uphold its responsibility” to
protect the climate, Mr. Li said, adding that Beijing was closely following
“international developments” on the issue. He did not directly mention Mr.
Trump or reports of the discussions in Washington.
After Berlin, Mr. Li will head to Brussels
for a summit meeting with European Union leaders, where they are expected to
announce a number of measures deepening joint cooperation on climate
protection.
“The E.U. and China recognize the importance
of developing global free trade and investment, and promoting the multilateral
rule-based system to allow the full development of the low greenhouse gas
emission economy with all its benefits,” reads the text of a joint statement on
climate change and clean energy that the Europeans and Chinese are expected to
announce on Friday.
In a message apparently aimed directly at Mr.
Trump, the Europeans and the Chinese also were expected to “call on all parties
to uphold the Paris Agreement” and “to strengthen efforts over time, in
accordance with the purpose and provisions of the agreement,” according to the
statement, which was seen Wednesday night by The New York Times.
Climate change, the Chinese and the Europeans
were expected to warn, has “detrimental impacts on water, food and national
security,” and those factors “have become a multiplying factor of social and
political fragility, and constitute a root cause for instability, including the
displacement of people.”
China, the world’s biggest emitter of carbon
dioxide, stands to gain international credit for standing by the Paris
Agreement, but it would not be able to fill the void on its own if the United
States abandoned the treaty.
The leadership in Beijing would turn to
Europe and to other developing countries to strengthen cooperation in cutting
greenhouse gas pollution and preparing to cope with a hotter planet, said two
experts who have advised the Chinese government.
If the United States does withdraw, “the
system of global climate governance won’t totally collapse, but it will be
shaken,” said Zhang Haibin, a professor at Peking University who studies
international environmental politics.
“The international community may expect China
to play a leading role,” he said. “But in my view, China doesn’t have the
capacity to single-handedly play the role of global hero. Instead, we’ll need
to work closely with the European Union and the Basic countries,” he said,
referring to a negotiating bloc that includes Brazil, South Africa, India and
China.
“Collective leadership will be more
important,” he said.
In the months before Mr. Trump’s
announcement, Chinese officials repeatedly urged the United States to stay in
the climate treaty. The Paris accord came together in 2015 after years of
fractious negotiations and a near breakdown of talks in Copenhagen in 2009 that
left bitterness between Chinese leaders and the Obama administration.
“The Paris accord was a milestone in global
climate governance,” Lu Kang, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, said at a news conference in March. “We think the Paris accord was
hard won, and to reach it the international community, including China and the
United States, coalesced around a high level of consensus.”
Over the past decade, Chinese leaders have
placed a higher priority on reining in pollution after decades of galloping
industrial growth. China’s unwelcome status as by far the world’s biggest
greenhouse gas emitter, as well as public anger over smog, has pushed the
government to cut pollution from fossil fuels as a slowdown in industry helped
cut demand for coal.
In 2016, China released about 10.4 billion
metric tons of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels and industry, a decline of 0.7
percent compared with 2015, according to the Global Carbon Budget, an
international research consortium. The United States emitted 5.4 billion tons,
but measured per person, its emissions are much higher. Initial measurements
suggest that China’s total emissions dipped again last year.
Last week, China’s president, Xi Jinping,
held a meeting of senior Communist Party officials to find ways to reconcile
climate change and economic growth.
“Our country’s economic and social
development has achieved historic successes,” Mr. Xi said at the meeting,
according to an official account. “At the same time, our rapid growth has led
to the accumulation of a great many environmental problems, and that’s become a
clear weak point, and an acute problem leading to intense public complaints.”
Formally abandoning the Paris accord would
probably take the United States three or four years, giving other governments
some time to regroup, said Zou Ji, a professor of environmental policy at
Renmin University in Beijing, who has advised the Chinese government on climate
change policy and negotiations.
“China, the European Union, India and other
major powers will still be there, and they’ll form a new leadership array,” Mr.
Zou said. “Given its national strength and status as a developing country, and
its traditional foreign policy, it will be very difficult for China to step
forward and say, ‘I’m the leader.’ But China can’t deny that it will have a
leading role.”
Melissa Eddy reported from Berlin, Chris
Buckley from Beijing, and James Kanter from Brussels.
