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Can the US & China work together on climate?
US-China ties have had a rocky year so far — especially balloon-gate. But the one issue where the two sides have always sought to find common ground is climate. And as most of the planet experienced record heat waves this weekend, cooperation between the world's top two emitters of greenhouse gases feels even more urgent.
US climate czar John Kerry arrived Sunday in Beijing for three days of talks aimed at restarting a dialogue ahead of November’s COP28 climate summit in Dubai. Kerry is the third senior US official to visit China in the past month to try to ease tensions with Beijing. He wants China to do more on its Net Zero goals and contribute to a fund for rich nations to compensate poor ones for the effects of climate change.
But China is unlikely to pitch in, since the UN technically considers it a “developing” country, not a "rich" one. Beijing also resents the US for reinstating tariffs on Chinese-made solar panels and mulling a tax on foreign steel and aluminum that would hurt Chinese exporters.
What’s more, the US and China have sent mixed climate signals in the past two years. While the Biden administration has passed legislation that'll pour billions of dollars into green energy, it has also approved new plans to drill for oil and natural gas in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. China, for its part, has upped the percentage of renewable sources in its energy mix but is now burning coal like there's no tomorrow after the government's push to cut emissions caused power shortages.
The bigger issue is whether the US and China can make any significant progress on climate amid their broader rivalry. With neither side willing to be seen as the one making concessions even on such an existential issue, don't hold your breath.
How Russia is both hurting & helping climate action
Under the Biden administration, the US wants to become a global leader on climate change. But the energy crisis from the war in Ukraine has put climate lower on the list of global priorities.
Still, the main climate lesson learned from the invasion is that countries need to become energy-independent by embracing renewables, US climate envoy John Kerry tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
America, he adds, is ready to help other nations follow that path.
One thing that can facilitate the transition to clean energy is new technology. The problem is scale, but Kerry says to watch out for some breakthroughs on carbon capture and fusion.
Watch the GZERO World episode: Gustavo Petro: the guerilla-turned-president who wants to "develop capitalism"
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Gustavo Petro: the guerilla-turned-president who wants to "develop capitalism"
Colombia is Latin America’s longest-standing democracy, but it’s never elected a leftist president … until now.
Gustavo Petro swept to power by a slim margin in June, thanks largely to young Colombian voters. What do they want from him? Change.
It won't be easy. Petro wants to provide free university education and health care, to end oil exploration, and to tax the rich. Will he deliver?
On GZERO World, Colombia's new leader sits down with Ian Bremmer in his first American interview to talk about his plans for Colombia's future, his views on the War on Drugs, and how he'll handle relations with Venezuela and the US.
Also in this episode of GZERO World: an update from John Kerry on the Biden administration's climate agenda.
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Kerry: Putin has bigger problems than Ukraine
The escalating crisis in Ukraine deserves the world’s focus right now, former US Secretary of State John Kerry told Ian Bremmer at the Munich Security Conference. “But the key is to remember here that Ukraine, one way or another, we’re going to resolve it ultimately over X number of years,” he said. “But the climate crisis remains existential, just as it was before the Ukraine crisis came up.”
Kerry, who now serves as President Joe Biden’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, also warned that the biggest concern for Russia’s economy right now is not its expensive military operation in Ukraine, but rather the country’s melting permafrost, crumbling urban infrastructure, and how they extract their natural gas. “Russia has a profound climate problem,” Kerry added.
And although the war in Ukraine may change things somewhat, the leaders of China and Russia have recently been on a sort of authoritarian honeymoon because they think America is declining.
Kerry pushes back against the narrative that this will be "the century of the authoritarian."
"That is a very serious misconception" on their part, he explains, because regardless of the current political problems, the Unites States retains its capacity to innovate and produce. Just look at COVID vaccines. Also, when "threatened as a nation and threatened in a way of life, Americans will unite and come together, as we have in the past. And we are to be reckoned with."
Meanwhile, he adds, both China and Russia face a looming demographic crunch that'll hit their economies hard because their populations are getting too old, too fast.
Watch the GZERO World episode: Ukraine War: Has Putin overplayed his hand?
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Nations don’t need carbon to grow their economies, says John Kerry
If John Kerry were only able to accomplish one thing as US climate change czar, he'd focus on changing the minds of the one-third of countries in the world that say they're "entitled" to pollute because they didn't before.
For Kerry, it's a fallacy that heavy carbon use is the only way to develop an economy because these nations can leapfrog from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
If we are able to cut by half the amount of carbon we're now releasing into the atmosphere by the end of the decade, he says, we may be able to meet the Paris Climate Agreement goal of keeping global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
"Currently, we're on a track to blow through 2 degrees, let alone 1.5. This is the urgency that people need to understand," he says. "Promises are fine, but they don't get the job done. It's the implementation that gets the job done. So, we're working on something called implementation plus."
Watch the GZERO World episode: Ukraine War: Has Putin overplayed his hand?
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- Podcast: Biden's climate bill sets US up to lead on clean energy, says Sec. Jennifer Granholm - GZERO Media ›
The “authoritarian honeymoon” is over, says John Kerry
Although the war in Ukraine may change things somewhat, the leaders of China and Russia have recently been on a sort of authoritarian honeymoon because they think America is declining.
John Kerry, former US Secretary of State and current climate czar, pushes back against the narrative that this will be "the century of the authoritarian."
"That is a very serious misconception" on their part, he explains, because regardless of the current political problems, the Unites States retains its capacity to innovate and produce. Just look at COVID vaccines. Also, when "threatened as a nation and threatened in a way of life, Americans will unite and come together, as we have in the past. And we are to be reckoned with."
Meanwhile, he adds, both China and Russia face a looming demographic crunch that'll hit their economies hard because their populations are getting too old, too fast.
Watch the GZERO World episode: Ukraine War: Has Putin overplayed his hand?
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Ukraine war: Has Putin overplayed his hand?
After weeks of military buildup and lies, Russia has attacked Ukraine. We are watching a worst-case scenario — a full invasion by land, sea, and cyberspace — play out in real time. With diplomacy dead, Western allies are now turning to sanctions.
The mood was somber at the recent Munich Security Conference, where world leaders were scrambling to avoid exactly this outcome.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer talks to former CIA boss David Petraeus to discuss the "porcupine" Vladimir Putin has eaten, and to John Kerry, former US Secretary of State and the Biden administration's current climate czar, about Putin's other big problem with climate.
Petraeus — who knows a thing or two about invasions, in his case US-led ones of Iraq — warns that for Russia, holding Ukraine will be a lot tougher than invading it. He also thinks Putin has miscalculated because when he shook the tree, out came NATO more united than it's been since the Cold War.
Kerry, for his part, believes that for Putin, war in Ukraine is a welcome distraction from Russia's more long-term problem: climate change. He also pushes back against the narrative that the US is in decline while authoritarians like Putin and China's Xi Jinping are on the rise.
As a bonus: surf’s up in ... Munich?
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Podcast: Authoritarians won’t defeat American values, says John Kerry
Listen: John Kerry, former US Secretary of State and current climate czar, pushed back against the idea that this will be "the century of the authoritarian" in a GZERO World interview with Ian Bremmer at the Munich Security Conference (before the invasion of Ukraine). If China and Russia have been on a sort of authoritarian honeymoon because they think America is declining, "that is a very serious misconception,” he said, because "Americans will unite and come together" if threatened. Meanwhile, both China and Russia face a looming demographic crunch.
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