President Joe Biden’s government envoy for climate affairs, John Kerry, assured on Wednesday that the US has no intention of imposing a solution to the climate crisis on China.
Kerry’s comments came after Chinese President Xi Jinping stated that China would make its own decisions on how to respond to global warming.
In China since Sunday to resume Sino-US dialogue on climate issues, John Kerry said Wednesday that he and his team had had “extraordinarily warm and productive meetings” with senior Chinese officials.
During Kerry’s visit to Beijing, Xi gave a speech on the environment.
“We have to make our own decisions about the path, methods, pace and intensity with which to carry them out. No one can expect to exert any influence on us,” he said, quoted by the official Xinhua news agency.
When Kerry was questioned about this on a conference call with journalists, he replied: “We don’t impose anything on anyone. We follow the science. There is no politics or ideology in what we do,” he added.
The US envoy met Chinese Premier Li Qiang and his counterpart Xie Zhenhua.
“None of the leaders I met suggested there was any reason why we should not coordinate, with mutual respect,” he added.
Climate talks between the US and China stalled last year after a visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi, then head of the House of Representatives.
According to Kerry, the two sides focused on how best to ensure that the next, the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28, in its English name) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, in its English abbreviation) , scheduled for December in Dubai, will be a success.
It was also agreed to focus on accelerating the integration of energy from renewable sources in the power sector, to reduce emissions related to carbon and other greenhouse gases such as methane, he explained.
Also according to John Kerry, the two sides will work “intensively” on these and other issues in the coming weeks, before meeting again in a few weeks.
Source: DN
