--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Thursday, November 14th.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: Hi Jessica.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Our colleague Matthew Dalton is an experienced COP attendee, and this weekend he's headed to Baku, Azerbaijan, where the world's largest annual climate conference, COP29, is taking place. Matthew, how many of these conferences have you been to at this point?
--:-- Matthew Dalton: This will be my fifth COP.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: The most interesting thing about them is it's a place where every country of the world almost is represented. And a lot of times people are dressed in their traditional garb. It's quite a festive and interesting place to be.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: What are you packing to go to Baku?
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: I'm just packing the boring clothes of a Wall Street Journal reporter. Suits, ties. No, no suits. Actually, no, I'll have a few suits. No ties, though. No ties.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: Matthew, in his boring reporter outfit, will likely see some members from the United States delegation at COP, probably wearing some suits as well. But the U.S. delegation is now seen as a lame duck following last week's election.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: The incoming Trump administration is expected to pull the U.S. away from global climate diplomacy. The U.S. role will be diminished. The U.S. voice will be diminished.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: It is widely expected that Donald Trump will pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement for the second time. He did it during the first administration. Biden brought the U.S. back in.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: So that really drains the U.S. credibility in the eyes of the world. And into that void, a new leader is seen as stepping up. China is the colossus of renewable energy right now.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: They are not only doing it at home, they're increasingly doing it overseas. Everybody's looking to China right now.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Thursday, November 14th. Coming up on the show, how China overtook the U.S. as the world's climate leader.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: China and the U.S. are the world's two largest economies and the world's two largest carbon emitters. So for the past few decades, any successful global climate deal has needed to get both superpowers on board.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: The U.S. represents the developed world, the rich world. China represents the developing world, or at least it has historically.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: And that is the big divide in the U.N. climate negotiations. It's developed versus developing.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: After years of negotiation, both the U.S. and China finally got on board with a major climate agreement in 2015, the Paris Climate Accords.
--:-- [Clip of former President Barack Obama speaking plays]
--:-- Former President Barack Obama: Nearly 200 nations have assembled here this week. A declaration that for all the challenges we face, the growing threat of climate change could define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: The agreement was groundbreaking. nearly 200 countries agreed to limit global warming to less than two degrees Celsius. That meant cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: The Accords also included financial commitments from wealthy countries like the U.S. The rich world would continue to provide finance for developing countries to shift away from fossil fuels and to build infrastructure that would protect these poorer countries from the effects of climate change.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: And that goes back to the very foundation of all these climate negotiations which was that it is the rich world that is responsible for most of the warming.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: We know the truth, that many nations have contributed little to climate change, but will be the first to feel its most destructive effects.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: You were there, right, in 2015. How would you characterize the relationship between China and the U.S. at the time? Like, who was pushing who during these negotiations?
--:-- Matthew Dalton: So it was the U.S. pushing China. Back then, China was still the largest emitter. They were the world's biggest coal consumer. And they were building a lot of coal-burning power plants.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: The U.S. was trying to convince the Chinese leadership to at least scale that back somewhat, to change their trajectory of emissions.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: So the dynamic was, you know, the U.S. was saying we ourselves consume a lot of energy. You know, we're going to take the lead and cut our emissions. But you, China, you have to do more.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Obama considered the Paris Agreement a major achievement of his presidency. But less than a year after it was formalized, Trump was elected president for the first time.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: And within months of taking office, President Trump announced the U.S. was pulling out of the agreement.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: Then, four years later, Joe Biden became president. And the U.S. was back in.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: And as of today, the United States is officially once again a party to the Paris Agreement, which we helped put together.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: You know, this kind of going back and forth is not helpful. And people are looking to the U.S. and saying, we can't really depend on you to help us with climate action and to lead this process forward.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: And that whiplash continues now that Trump is heading back to the White House. He says he wants to pull out of Paris again and ramp up the country's production of fossil fuels.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: And we will drill baby drill. We're going to drill baby drill. He wants to pump as much oil and gas as possible.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: He has signaled that he wants to open up more federal lands to oil and gas drilling. Remove the red tape that exists that limits oil and gas drilling, perhaps environmental reviews that one might normally have to do before you start pumping oil and gas.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: Very little talk about renewable energy, electric vehicles.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: As the U.S. has gone back and forth on its climate commitment, China has steadily grown its renewable energy and electric vehicle industries. And it's now the world leader in both.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: Which means at this month's climate conference, countries are turning their attention to Beijing. So everybody's looking to China, and the question is whether they are going to take that next step and be kind of like an official leader.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Will China step up? That's after the break.
--:-- [Clip of air pollution in Beijing plays]
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Around the time the Paris Accords were signed, China had a serious problem with air pollution. So it might not seem like it, but it's the middle of the day here in Beijing.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: The air is so polluted that it's darkened the sky. Pollution levels in the Chinese business capital are the highest they've been this year.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: The government issued what is known as a yellow alert on Monday, the third highest smog warning.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: The accords were an incentive for China to address this issue head on. And there was an economic upside too.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: China is very good at selecting industries for development, throwing a lot of state support behind them and growing them very quickly.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: And the Chinese leadership became very interested in shifting away from like old manufacturing industries to new industries, the industries of the future.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Unlike in the U.S., China doesn't have to deal with that pesky back and forth between political parties. They've had one leader in charge for the past decade.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: And China's president has pushed the government to invest heavily in green energy.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: China's capacity to build renewable technologies began growing very quickly. That include solar panels, wind turbines. It also started to include electric vehicles, batteries of all kinds, both for electric vehicles and also just batteries that are installed on the grid.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: Right. Their clean energy industries were always strong and they became multiples stronger.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: So under the Paris Agreement, China is considered a developing country, which means not as much was asked of it.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: But how is China doing in terms of curbing emissions? Yeah, as a developing country, there aren't too many explicit goals, explicit requirements for them to live up to.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: That's sort of a caveat to what I'm about to say, but generally speaking, they're way ahead. In 2020, China set a goal of installing 1,200 gigawatts of wind and solar power by 2030.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: They've already met that goal six years early. And the country has become the world's largest EV manufacturer.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: China also said it would prevent its carbon emissions from rising by 2030. International climate analysts say that may have already happened.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: In other words, that emissions in China may have already peaked and are on the way down.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: So by those metrics, they're doing great. They're doing much better than people could have imagined they could have done.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: I mean, I think it's given hope to the idea that the worst effects of climate change can be avoided.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Now, the fact is that they need to be doing a lot more if the world is going to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: So China is doing well. They're not doing nearly enough. But the U.S. isn't doing enough either.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Now, as countries gather for COP29, Matthew says that one of the big questions he's hearing from the U.S. and Europe is whether or not China should still be considered a developing country.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: One of the things they point out is that it's the size of China's total emissions, not just this year, but going back all the way to the beginning of the industrial era, are getting close to the size of the emissions of a number of wealthy countries.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: And so they're saying, look, things are evening out. You are such a large emitter of greenhouse gases now that you've got to take some responsibility for that, more responsibility.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: Whether China is reclassified could have financial repercussions around the world.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Matthew says this year, the main agenda item at COP is to decide how much money developed countries will contribute after next year.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: So that is the task at this COP, is to set the target for post-2025 climate finance.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: And everybody acknowledges, including the donor countries, that the sums that are required to move the developing world to cleaner energy are huge.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: And people have been talking about multiple trillions of dollars a year.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: The U and Europe are saying we want you China to contribute to this new climate finance goal.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: We think you come a long way since the first UN climate treaty was signed in 1992. China's economy has grown by, you know, with multiples and multiples.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: They are now the biggest manufacturer of all kinds of renewable technologies. They are the unquestioned leader and all of that, China, you should also be providing some money through the UN climate system.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: How do you expect that debate to play out? Like, what are you expecting to see happen in the next few days?
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Well, I'm expecting to see the Europeans and the US and Australia and Japan make that argument, say, China, it's time for you to contribute to some extent.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: China is going to resist that. And I think the big question is, are the U.S. and China going to get together for some kind of powwow that seals the deal?
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Why would China resist, though? Like, why would China resist stepping up into its already kind of de facto role as the global leader on climate?
--:-- Matthew Dalton: Well, I think there's an ideological reason behind it. The division in the UN climate world is between developing and developed.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: And China, and sort of the underscore there, the background is between the West and the third world or the developing world or the global South, however you want to call it.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: It's kind of an ideological divide. China doesn't see itself, doesn't want to be seen as a Western country.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: It's a communist country. It has solidarity with other developing countries. It does hold itself up as a leader of that block of the developing countries.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: So I think China's leadership, they don't want to redefine themselves in that way.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: China has agreed to a provision that would allow developing countries to make financial contributions to a new UN fund.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: But it hasn't made a contribution so far. The country says it will continue to offer assistance to fellow developing countries to the best of its capacity.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: What strikes you most about the moment that we're in now, in the struggle to combat climate change?
--:-- Matthew Dalton: Well, it's possible we're at an inflection point.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: It's possible that China's emissions have already peaked, which would be a huge victory in terms of the fight against climate change.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: It would send a really important signal to the rest of the world that this problem is manageable.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: You've really got a lot of investment happening and all kinds of new technologies and solar and wind and clean hydrogen that are coming online.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: The rest of the world is buying into it to a large extent. The progress is not fast enough, but it is happening.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Sounds like there are still some questions outstanding, some pretty big ones, but Matthew, you sound kind of optimistic, actually, which I don't think I was expecting.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: Yeah, I am a kind of optimistic. I think that limiting global warming to well under two degrees is possible.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Even if 1.5 degrees looks really hard, I do think well under two degrees is, yeah, it's within reach.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Well, thank you so much again for taking the time to chat with us.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: I hope you enjoy COP this year. I hope you enjoy COP this year.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Yeah, apparently I'm told that Azeri cuisine is very good.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: Well, keep us posted. Send some pictures.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: Okay. That's all for today, Thursday, November 14th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal.
--:-- Matthew Dalton: If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Jessica Mendoza: We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.
