My Take | As the US turns away, China has even bigger role in climate fight

Gloom and doom seem the only way to describe the battle against climate change of late. US President Donald Trump in January again withdrew the world’s second-largest polluter from the landmark Paris Agreement limiting green house emissions to curb rising temperatures. Argentina’s President Javier Milei, a climate sceptic, last week said he, too, may leave.

And this month, scientists revealed that it was likely the world had already blown through the 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming threshold nations were hoping to hold the line on when they signed the Paris accords a decade ago. In Paris, 196 countries agreed to rein in emissions to keep the rise in global average temperatures “well below” 2 degrees above pre-industrial times, and ideally stop it at 1.5 degrees.

The consequences of climate change are already being felt. Hong Kong saw four typhoons emerge in November, unusually late for the season, and extreme drought conditions have spread around the world, including fuelling the Los Angeles wildfires last month. Catastrophic “megadroughts” lasting multiple years also are emerging. Chile is suffering a drought that began in 2010.

Still, one can argue the US sitting out the war on climate change, while bad, will not be dire.

First off, China, the world’s largest emitter, shows no signs of altering its commitment to greening its economy, and in fact it is likely to accelerate its programmes. The environmental drive comes from the top. Sustainable development is core to President Xi Jinping’s efforts to orchestrate a shift of the economy away from traditional low-end manufacturing and real estate to leverage hi-tech and more advanced sectors for quality growth.

“Green development is the defining feature of high-quality development, and new quality productive forces are green in nature,” Xi told a Politburo meeting in early 2024, in remarks that were republished by the top Communist Party theoretical journal Qiushi in November, just days after Trump’s re-election. “We must accelerate the transition to a model of green development, which will contribute to reaching peak carbon emissions and carbon neutrality, ” Xi said. In his new year address, Xi again hailed a milestone for new-energy vehicles, as well as enhancements in “green and low carbon development”.