Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
It’s no secret that Biden is trying to get the USA back on track to meet its climate targets after the Trump administration and become a global climate leader. Not only will this effort help the US become more resilient to the impeding climate disaster and crushing emissions limits, but it will also enable them to retain their top seat on the international political table. However, the US has a devastating Achilles heel stopping them from reaching this position, and if nothing is done to address it, it will threaten their hard-earned spot as a keystone superpower. This weakness isn’t the US’s vast oil industry, its hardline version of capitalism, or the fact that one side of its political spectrum is getting more anti-climate change action and anti-science. Instead, it stems from the US’s inability to hold its hands up. Let me explain.
This flaw was clearly on display during John Kerry’s (the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate) visit to China. The US and China are the world’s biggest polluters, collectively emitting 40% of humanity’s emissions. Over the past few years, the two have worked remarkably well together to advance climate action, having agreed to a decade of bilateral climate work aimed at reducing methane emissions, a potent climate pollutant; combating deforestation; and increasing renewable energy deployment. As such, they took a joint lead in spearheading the world to net-zero.
But, all of this ended last August, when tensions between the two over Taiwan’s independence skyrocketed, ruining diplomatic relations and derailing this cooperative climate movement.
Kerry’s recent trip to China was aimed at rekindling this cooperation. But despite him and his Chinese counterpart agreeing on many actions that need to be taken to save the planet, they couldn’t reach any formal decision. Why? Well, it is all down to the US’s hypocrisy.
A week before his visit to China, Kerry was being questioned by Congress. Republican Brian Mass asked Kerry if he was “planning to commit America to climate reparations”, adding the US would have to “pay some other country because they had a flood, or they had a hurricane”. Kerry…
