The Americans flew in on the sixth day of the World Climate Conference. Ed Markey, Democratic Senator from Massachusetts, sat in the US pavilion this morning and called out to the audience: “We’re back, we’re in the process and we’re not done yet.” That set the tone, and listening to some Americans made you think the global warming problem was almost solved. And your country is leading by example.
The world is a long way from the goal of keeping the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius or at least well below two degrees, as stated in the Paris climate agreement. The two biggest problem countries are China and the USA. They alone are responsible for more than 40 percent of greenhouse gases. Without the two, nothing works in climate protection. Expectations for US President Joe Biden’s visit to Sharm el-Sheikh on Friday afternoon were correspondingly high. The announcement that Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet in person next week on the sidelines of the G-20 summit also fuels hopes in Egypt that the two major powers will come together again, at least on the global issue of climate. All US-China diplomatic talks have been suspended since US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan.
“It’s a very good sign that the United States is taking the climate issue seriously at the highest level,” said Jennifer Morgan, State Secretary at the Federal Foreign Office and Germany’s chief negotiator. The US delegation, which included Pelosi, emphasized their achievements in recent months. At least when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from now on. The Biden government managed to pass two pieces of legislation that support climate-friendly technologies with programs worth billions: the infrastructure law and, above all, the so-called law to reduce inflation. Biden called it “our country’s largest and most important climate law.” It mobilizes $368 billion to promote clean energy.
The USA takes a different approach to climate protection than the EU
“The instruments are there that make it not unlikely that the Americans will achieve their climate goals,” says Christoph Bals, Managing Director of Germanwatch. Biden said he would reduce emissions by more than 50 percent by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. “We will achieve our goals,” he announced. The USA takes a different approach to this than the European Union. While the EU financially punishes all those who emit emissions, primarily through trading in CO₂ certificates, the USA lures them with money. At many levels, companies can expect significant tax breaks or subsidies in the future if they expand renewable energy, produce green hydrogen or store carbon dioxide in the ground.
Where Biden could only disappoint the world community was on the subject of finance. The fact that the industrialized countries, as everyone complains about, cannot get the promised 100 billion dollars a year in aid payments for the developing countries is almost solely due to the USA. The reparations for “losses and damage” demanded by the poorer states are also viewed critically there. In domestic politics, it is hardly plausible in the USA to decide on large amounts of aid from the budget for countries far away. Especially not when Republicans have anything to say.
The climate conference is looking all the more closely at the counts in some US states, which will decide the outcome of the midterm elections. If the Republicans take over both the House of Representatives and the Senate, demands in Sharm el-Sheikh that the Americans, historically the largest polluters of greenhouse gases, should do more financially, will probably come to nothing. “No government in the world has enough money to do this job,” said John Kerry, Biden’s special climate envoy. His primary goal is to mobilize the private sector.
Kerry had proposed allowing large companies to purchase greenhouse gas credits in exchange for financing climate-friendly projects in other parts of the world. This is intended to mobilize billions of dollars in private money to make the transition “from dirty to clean energy” possible, said Kerry. Because it is very difficult to check such greenhouse gas balances and similar projects have already failed in the past, Europeans reacted skeptically to Kerry’s proposal. In the group of developing countries, he triggered some angry reactions and the fear that the Americans want to continue to shirk their financial responsibility.
At the same time, there is growing pressure on China and the Arab countries to also participate in climate finance for developing countries. As decided at the first climate conference in 1992, so far only the old industrialized countries of the West have been challenged. “But we’re in 2022 now,” said Jennifer Morgan. The world has changed fundamentally, some countries are wealthier today, Germany expects more countries to participate.
Despite the geopolitical tensions with China, Morgan and Kerry attempted to reopen the conversation with the Chinese before and during the climate conference. “It’s important to talk to each other,” Morgan said. She and Kerry are well acquainted with Beijing’s chief negotiator, Xie Zhenhua. “We’ve had some informal talks, but we’re not in formal negotiations right now,” Kerry told Bloomberg news agency at the start of the conference.
Whether the two largest greenhouse gas emitters will officially resume climate diplomacy in Egypt will be decided on Monday 9,500 kilometers away in Bali when Biden and Xi Jinping meet. Meanwhile, observers like Christoph Bals are happy that China has not yet questioned the Glasgow agreements, which also put pressure on China’s weak climate targets.
Instead, the Chinese delegation apparently announced that they would get their methane problem under control. While methane does not last as long in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, it is far more effective in the short term. Here, too, China is the largest emitter. Observers hope that the country could even join the methane reduction initiative launched by the USA and the EU in Glasgow in the second week of the conference. And thus raise the overall national reduction target for greenhouse gases. “That would be important progress,” says Christoph Bals.