Kerry Returns from China without a Climate Deal, or Even a Meeting with Xi

Essay by Eric Worrall

First published JoNova; Kerry on fire: Talks were very productive, but didn’t produce a single breakthrough, and Xi ignored Kerry’s desire for a meeting.

As the world sizzles, China says it will deal with climate its own way

By Christian Shepherd,  Emily Rauhala and Chris Mooney

Updated July 19, 2023 at 12:26 p.m. EDT | Published July 19, 2023 at 7:07 a.m. EDT

As parts of the Northern Hemisphere reach heat close to the limits of human survival, Chinese leader Xi Jinping declared in remarks reported Wednesday that Beijing alone will decide how — and how quickly — it addresses climate change.

Xi’s comments to top Communist Party officials, which came as U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry wrapped up three days of talks with his Chinese counterpart, laid bare the challenge the world faces in curbing planet-warming pollution that is fueling heat waves across three continents. China has surpassed the United States as the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, and approved the construction of dozens of coal plants last year even as it added more renewable power.

China would pursue its commitments “unswervingly,” but the pace of such efforts “should and must be” determined without outside interference, Xi said late Tuesday. Xi’s approach marked a break from the 2015 Paris climate accord, where a Chinese-U.S. agreement paved the way for the international goal of keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.

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Speaking to reporters in a phone call Wednesday, Kerry described his talks with Chinese officials as “very cordial, very direct, and, I think, very productive,” but he acknowledged that they did not produce a significant breakthrough. The meetings marked the first time in a year that the two sides had met.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/07/19/climate-change-heat-wave-china/

What can I say? I’ve worked in Taiwan, so I know a bit about Chinese culture. What Kerry received was as close as a Chinese diplomat will come to telling you to “get lost” while remaining civil.

From Breitbart;

Xi Jinping Holds Climate Summit as John Kerry Visits China – Without Meeting with Him

JOHN HAYWARD

19 Jul 202336

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping humiliated “climate envoy” John Kerry this week by holding a two-day “national conference on ecological and environmental protection” in Beijing without his American guest. 

Xi fairly explicitly told Kerry to get lost in his remarks at the conference, declaring that China — the world’s worst polluter by a very wide margin — would set its own environmental “goals” and chart its own “path” to reaching them. Kerry limped out of Beijing empty-handed, mumbling about the “long and detailed meetings” he attended and “frank conversations” he held, but with no climate agreement in hand.

Xi’s two-day ecological conference was essentially a very long restatement of the evasion China has used on the climate change movement with great success thus far, vaguely promising that the heavily industrialized authoritarian regime will reduce its carbon emissions thirty years from now but, for the time being, it will burn as much coal as it pleases and no input from Western environmentalists is welcome.

“China’s commitments are unswerving, but the path towards the goals as well as the manner, pace and intensity of efforts to achieve them should and must be determined by the country itself, rather than swayed by others,” Xi declared at the conference.

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Read more: https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2023/07/19/xi-jinping-holds-climate-summit-john-kerry-visits-china-without-meeting-him/

I’m guessing China loves these excruciating diplomatic failures. China gets to play Middle Kingdom, with Kerry or Yellen or whoever playing the role of the unworthy supplicant begging for attention at the court of the Emperor, and in doing so heaps endless humiliation on the USA. Yet the feckless Biden Administration keeps falling for it, over and over.

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