Climate change presents the world with massive and potentially devastating challenges. As the two largest economic powerhouses and carbon emitters in the world, China and the U.S., which together account for more than 44 per cent of global greenhouse emissions,[①] are both confronted by both a huge challenge and a large risk in global climate change action. For the most part, China and the U.S. are central to any successful global effort to mitigate climate change and preserve the Earth for this and future generations, and international climate change system cannot be successful founded without the proactive participation and leadership of them. President Barack Obama begins his second term with a high-profile position on climate change, and once again set the energy and climate change policy as an important role in the decision-making agenda. [②] In June 2013, President Obama Climate Action Plan (the Plan) emphasized three overarching goals: (1) reduce domestic carbon dioxide emissions by 17 percent between 2005 and 2020; (2) prepare the U.S. for the impacts of climate change; and (3) lead international efforts to combat climate change. U.S. showed a significantly positive attitude on climate; the climate change is increasingly important in the U.S. diplomacy.[③] With these considerations in mind, in this paper, the author will firstly examine adjustments of U.S. climate change policy since Obama’s second term, and the implications and consequences. Then the article will describe different values on climate change between China and the U.S. Finally, the article will discuss cooperation roadmap between China and the U.S.

I. Adjustment and Features of U.S. Climate Change Policy Since Obama’s Second Term

As the Obama Administration came into its second term, Obama again made Climate Change a National Priority and the U.S. began to play a pro-active role in global climate change issues. The Obama Administration has not only focused on the adjustment of the energy using patterns, but has proposed detailed measures in adapting to climate change, which is obviously seen when Obama and John Kerry jointly strengthen the position of the climate issues within its diplomacy. The adjustment of the U.S. climate change policy will have an effect on the climate governance for the world.

Firstly, the re-elected Obama Administration is signaling it wants to act on climate. Obama admitted that “we hadn’t done as much as we need to” address climate change, and promised a “wide-ranging conversation with scientists, engineers and elected officials” to make sure that global warming is “not a problem we’re passing on to future generations that’s going to be very expensive and very painful to deal with.”[④] American climate policy is that climate action is frozen due to congressional inaction. Some don’t realize that the Obama Administration is using powers through laws like the Clean Air Act to control emissions. Obama Climate Action Plan directs the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to establish standards for carbon emissions from both new and existing power plants. The Obama Administration believes that the U.S. will reach the emission reduction goal about 17% reduction before 2020 with the lower cost than expected because the U.S. is currently experiencing economical recovery driven by the engine of energy innovation and shale gas revolution. Thus, the U.S. will take concrete measures on climate change instead of rhetoric words.

Secondly, the U.S. connected climate change with U.S. energy independence, and climate change will bring dramatic changes in U.S. leadership and the international economic system, and national competition advantages will be built on the basis of clean and alternative energy. Energy and climate are critical elements of U.S. national security, and which have risen to the top of U.S. diplomatic agendas around the world.[⑤] The Obama Administration promised that the U.S. would lead the world on climate change, as he emphatically stated that cleaner energy would be at the heart of his domestic policy agenda, “And countries like China and Germany are going all in the race for clean energy. I believe Americans build things better than anybody else. I want America to win that race, but we can’t win it if we’re not in it”.[⑥]

Thirdly, in terms of the international climate negotiations, the U.S. will attempt to reach an international agreement of ambition, inclusiveness and flexibility. The core of the plan is to build a relatively constant hub agreement with all parties involved. Besides, specific and practical “spoke decisions” will be reached which contains not all parties and is easy to modify. The two together constitute a package deal system. Obama Administration’s team officials on climate change have either retained as key members such as Stern, or got promoted such as Pershing, etc. It shows that the Obama Administration intends to strengthen the climate diplomacy. Besides, Secretary of State Kerry may also attempt to achieve concrete results in the field of climate change through various bilateral diplomatic efforts.

Fourthly, the Obama Administration will pursue multilateralism, persuade the developing countries, particularly new emerging powers, share much more responsibilities by the new agreement beyond 2020 that would apply to all countries, not just developed countries. Secretary of State Kerry said it will focus on “three pillars”: drafting post-2020 climate agreements (which will be successors to the expiring Kyoto Protocol), enhancing low-emission development, and building societies resilient to climate change. Obama argued in this June, “To protect our climate and our collective security, we must call together a truly global coalition. I've made it clear that we will act, but so too must the world. China and India they would not be excused from global efforts to tackle climate change.”[⑦] “We’ve also intensified our climate cooperation with major emerging economies like India and Brazil, and China”.

II. The Impacts of the Obama’s Climate Policy

The Obama Administration climate change policy will bring a lot influence on the U.S. domestic politics: Firstly, the academia, business and the Obama Administration had improved the awareness of climate change with the global extreme weather phenomena frequently occurred. Recently, the harm done by climate change adds more and more potential and real environmental threats to the U.S., which in turn increase the growing concerns on regulating global warming in the U.S.[⑧] Secondly, the new Administration shows a strong domestic supports in reshaping its leadership on the climate change. A large majority of Americans - nearly 90 percent - favor action on global warming, even if there are economic costs. Fully 85% of Democrats say there is solid evidence that the average temperature has been getting warmer, up from 77% last year and similar to levels in 2007 and 2008. Nearly half of Republicans (48%) say there is solid evidence of warming, compared with 43% last year and 35% in 2009. Thirdly, U.S. is currently experiencing economic recovery driven by the engine of energy innovation. The U.S. economy is on the road to recovery and no longer offers an excuse for inaction.[⑨] The Obama Administration has once again set the energy and climate change policy as an important role in the decision-making agenda, and adopted administrative measures to intensify the efforts of mitigating as well as adapting to the climate change.

For international politics side, the “hub and spoke”[⑩] mechanism recently proposed by U.S. in the international climate negotiations will help to resume its leadership and to strengthen the other conventional mechanisms. The “hub and spoke” has not only gained support from the “AILAC” countries such as Australia and Colombia, but from EU. They all agree that the Obama Administration’s new climate negotiation has integrated a top-down with a bottom-up approach.

III. Different Values on Climate Change between China and the U.S.

Between 2011 and 2012, the author endeavoured to survey perspectives of thought leaders in China and the U.S. on the topic of climate change security. The survey analysis seeks to understand the views of both countries’ thought leaders on security implications of climate change, and propose specific measures to avoid or manage risks climate change poses to security. The interviewees and respondents work at leading academic institutions and think-tanks in China and the U.S. and are individuals who are often viewed as thought leaders in foreign policymaking or are important researchers in their field. They were asked to rate the severity of each security implication (from no effect, a small effect, a modest effect and a very strong effect) during the global warming influences at present, in 2025 and even in 2050. Around 70 valid survey responses have been received from both sides.

Based on the survey results, there are some overlaps on climate-related security issues between China’s and the U.S.’ thought leaders. Nevertheless, the prioritization of security concerns is somewhat different between the two groups. The survey reflects that Chinese thought leaders express higher security concerns regarding climate change-related risks and threats compared to their U.S. counterparts. Food, energy, economical development, maritime boundaries, trade disputes and water are currently the top concerns among China’s thought leaders. Comparatively, humanitarian assistance, water, natural disasters, food and energy are the top concerns among the U.S. thought leaders (Figure 1).

Looking out to 2025 (Figure 2), economically sustainable development, energy, maritime boundaries, food security, and water availability are the top five concerns among China’s thought leaders. Meanwhile, water, humanitarian assistance, natural disasters, food security, and energy are the top five concerns by 2025 among the U.S. thought leaders who participated in the survey.

Ultimately, China and the U.S. are simultaneously confronted with major security risks triggered by global warming. Each security issue is likely to get progressively worse as time passes based on Chinese and American views on climate change security. Despite the fact that water, food, and energy are accorded different priorities by Chinese and American thought leaders, they remain as shared concerns. Both the U.S. and China adopt serious attitudes towards possible interstate conflicts over water resources.

Conclusions derived from the survey demonstrate that China’s perspective on climate change security is development-centric, while the U.S. view reflects a centricity on global governance. In most cases, as the largest developing country and late-comer to modernization, China is among the countries most susceptible to global warming due to its vulnerable geographic position and economic structure. China’s present stage of urbanization and industrialization also makes it much more vulnerable to the impact of climate change-induced hazards, such as fresh water availability, inadequate food security, and energy security. China struggles for economically sustainable development in the context of global warming. In contrast, as an early-comer in industrialization, the U.S. aims to maintain global stability and mitigate global warming disasters, and the U.S. places high priority on post-modern values such as human rights and intervention.

The climate change security survey results reflect that both countries recognize their mutual dilemma on energy security. The U.S. economy is built on a consumption-intensive fossil fuel energy infrastructure. To address this reality, the Obama administration is striving for a green transition to low carbon systems and as part of its “win the future” initiative. Admittedly, the U.S. Congress is not close to passing climate or energy legislation, so the views of the thought leaders have not appeared to have a major influence on lawmakers to this point. China, in contrast, is also trying by all means available to avoid mirroring the American energy consumption model as seen in its ambitious green goals recently released in the “12th Five-Year Plan”.

For those concerned about the adverse security consequences of climate change, collective actions and regimes designed to limit carbon emissions are at the core of global warming concerns. However, preventing catastrophic climate change is actually a resource challenge that will lead to dramatic competition in energy, water, and maritime resources for China. As a country rich in natural resources, the U.S. views infectious diseases, global non-renewable resource shortages, and human rights-connected threats as the central security challenges of global warming. Climate change is altering the geopolitical resource landscape as manifested by increased competition over Arctic resources and disputes over maritime boundaries.

IV. The Implications for China-U.S. Cooperation

China and the U.S. represent the world’s two biggest economies. We represent the world’s two largest consumers of energy, and we share more than 50 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. China is facing crucial needs to promote development while joining the global struggle against global warming and contributing to global energy security. Since the 1990s, China has paid increasing attention to environmental protection and the growing hazards posed by climate change. In fact, as early as in its 2008 white paper on climate change, the Chinese government acknowledged that “China is one of the countries most susceptible to the adverse effects of climate change, mainly in the fields of agriculture, livestock breeding, forestry, natural ecosystems, water resources, and coastal zones.”[11] Now China is under more and more pressures in climate change governance, as augured by the Western countries’ media, “China was classed then as a developing country but it is now the world’s largest emitter and soon will overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy. China has made clear its determination to hang on to its developing country status and that the countries classed as developed in ’97 must continue to bear most of the burden for emissions cuts. India, another large emitter, also is considered a developing country under Kyoto.”[12] “China and the US are to be the clear focus of the next year of climate change negotiations, following a hard-fought climate conference that ended in Doha on next year, to succeed, both the US and China must accept stiff emissions-cutting targets, and find a way of providing finance to poor countries to help them cut emissions and cope with the effects of global warming”.[13]

China and the U.S. are among the countries that will suffer the worst effects of climate change, and both “view climate change and energy security as two of the greatest challenges of our time” as stated in their leader’s joint statement. Economically speaking, China and the U.S. are both faced with unprecedented opportunities for shifting the traditional economic mode to low carbon development associated with mitigating climate change. China will decrease carbon dioxide emissions per capital GDP Unit by a notable margin by 2020 from the 2005 level, to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 15 percent by 2020.[14] China has become a world leader in PV cell production: China has over 400 photovoltaic (PV) companies and produces approximately 23% of the photovoltaic products worldwide. China's exploitable hydroelectric resources stands at 378 million kilowatts, equivalent to annual power supply of 1.92 trillion kwh, topping the world and making up 16.7 percent of the world’s total.[15] President Obama announced a target of generating 80% of its electricity from clean energy sources by 2035 (presently it is less than 40%) and become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.[16]

To be sure, China and the U.S. are well-positioned to leap frog into a clean energy development path. In the longer term, however, both countries could show true leadership on climate change in the world by adopting a concerted transition to an economy that produces fewer carbon emissions. Politically speaking, global climate change governance needs the full engagement of China and the U.S. The U.S., the global largest carbon emitter, is not a member of the Kyoto Protocol, and even opposes the Kyoto regime with Japan and Russia. As the main global energy organization, the International Energy Agency (IEA) does not include China as a full member. Particularly, global governance on climate change becomes more and more fragmented: the divergences among developing countries, particularly on emissions targets and timetable, began to grow larger than before. The inherent conflicts on the Kyoto Protocol between the umbrella group (Japan, Russia, and the U.S.), and the EU continue to reduce the effectiveness of the Kyoto regime. The climate change governance landscape is evolving and there are new mechanisms such as the G20 and WTO that will replace the UNFCCC to some extent.

The China-U.S. cooperation on climate change is an urgent need for the Obama Administration: Firstly, the U.S. public opinion becomes increasingly aware of the climate change issue. Secondly, the Obama Administration is also eager to get rid of its bad image of inaction on climate change. Concerned with his doings during the Durban and the Doha Conference, Obama’s climate policy has disappointed the world and has become the focus of criticism. Due to the restriction by the congress, the U.S. must rely on bilateral diplomacy between the great powers to fight for its development. Thirdly, China and the U.S. have common interests in avoiding absolute quantified emission reduction commitments. Susan Rice argued, “As the world’s two largest energy consumers, energy producers, and greenhouse gas emitters, the U.S. and China also have a duty to lead together to tackle climate change and spur the global transition to a low-carbon energy future. Last June, Presidents Obama and Xi reached an historic agreement to phase out certain potent greenhouse gases.”[17] The Obama Administration has been expecting shared governance on climate. If the U.S. were to avoid becoming the saboteur of the climate negotiations in the international arena, it then must seek tacit coordination with China. Fourthly, concerned with the specific measures on climate change, the U.S. also believes that the two powers have a huge room for cooperation including the science and technology research and development, low-carbon technologies for commercial applications, the international transfer of technologies that are friendly to climate, carbon tax and emissions trading, etc.

China also needs this kind of cooperation. Firstly, from the perspective of global governance, China has been actively involved in global climate change governance, China’s leaders at the Copenhagen climate summit stressed the need to work together to address the challenge of climate change. Without the recognition and involvement of the U.S., China would face difficulties in promoting the idea of global governance on climate change. Secondly, China and the U.S. have common interests in building the rules which could take bilateral socio-economic benefits into consideration. The U.S. only recognizes the “politically and technically achievable emission reduction”, while China has always insisted on its status as a developing country in the global mitigation actions, but the EU has always stressed that both China and the U.S. should achieve the mandatory emission reductions as soon as possible. In this case, the positions of the two countries can be coordinated to achieve common interests in the field of climate negotiations. Thirdly, from the perspective of the domestic development in China, it is the emphasis of the reform in the twelfth five-year plan to build a unified domestic carbon trading platform and to promote energy conservation and emission standards in the field of energy and environment. The U.S. possesses advanced experience and institutions in these areas. The declaration has made the market regulation mechanisms as the core of China-U.S. cooperation on energy and environment.

From the positive side of its effect on China, it is an important feature of China-U.S. relations that the linkage between the two countries’ domestic politics has become increasingly evident in recent years. From the overall situation of China-U.S. relations, the adjustment of U.S. climate policy will have a positive impact on China-U.S. cooperation. Compared with the past four years, the two sides are more consistent in the strategic direction of domestic development. Therefore, the cooperation on climate change serves the strategic interests of both countries. The cooperation on climate change is becoming an important part of the new, big-power relations between the U.S. and China. The Obama Administration hopes to improve its image in the global climate governance through positive bilateral diplomacy with the major developing countries like China.

However, we must recognize that the adjustment of the U.S. climate diplomacy will objectively increase the pressure on China. Firstly, the “hub and spoke” mechanism proposed by the U.S. would undermine the “common but differentiated responsibilities” as well as the main line of climate negotiations based on the United Nations Convention. To make the matter worse, the U.S. proposal also differentiates the negotiating bloc of developing countries, which makes the emerging developing countries face greater pressure. Secondly, from the point of view of China-U.S. bilateral relations on climate diplomacy,[18] parts of the low-carbon industry may face a fiercer competition and the trade friction is difficult to avoid, especially when the U.S. takes the approach to stop supporting the use of public financing in overseas to build coal-fired power plants that may undermine China's overseas investments. The U.S. may impose higher emission reduction requirements for China out of its domestic political needs.

In order to cope with the Obama Administration new climate change policy, China should also make the full preparations as follows: First of all, China should propel the China-U.S. cooperation of climate change, considering Obama administration’s active and lofty tone changes of the climate change policy on the strategic level. America always occupies the core position of Chinese diplomatic strategies. It is definitely necessary and meaningful to bring climate change into the China-U.S. integral diplomacy, which will make the China-U.S. climate change cooperation one of the backbones that stabilizes the China-U.S. relationship. To this end, we can come up with a systematic assessment about the progress and problems in the China-U.S. climate change cooperation of the past four years during the first period of the Obama Administration. Besides, we also can prepare the relevant pre-arranged planning on our part about propelling the China-U.S. climate change cooperation through bilateral and multilateral mechanism like China-U.S. strategic economic dialogue and so on. Secondly, China should actively deal with the tendency of trade and technical protectionism in American climate policy. Sticking to WTO principles of trading equally and "common but differentiated responsibilities", China should precaution American green trade protectionism. At the same time, the requirements in the field of technology transfer should be raised, and China is supposed to urge the U.S. bring the intellectual property problem into the China-U.S. bilateral climate cooperation relationship to discuss, in order to propel the U.S. and China to accomplish the global low-carbon development goal by the technical improvements. Thirdly, when dealing with the U.S. in the global climate negotiation, paying high value and keeping watch are simultaneously of great importance. China is still a developing country, maintaining the unity of the developing-country camp has an unshakable position not only in the field of climate change, but also in the whole Chinese diplomatic strategies. As for the U.S. who unites EU and other countries push forward "Hub-and-Spoke Agreement" to change the negotiation rules' tendency of global climate change, China should insist our status as a developing country, and not choose a standing between the U.S. and Europe. China should pay more attention on the China-U.S. cooperation, but not get too closed, nor form “China-U.S. climate leadership or co-governance” with America.

V. Future Cooperation Roadmap between China and the U.S.

China and the U.S. account for roughly 42% of the world’s CO2 emissions.[19] Hence, Chinese and U.S. government attitudes towards the climate change negotiations are critical. The two countries should strengthened mutual understanding and moved the climate change negotiations forward. Besides improving cooperation at the UNFCCC conferences, the two countries should also strengthen mutual understanding and make further progress at the G20 and Major Economies Forum (MEF) meetings. Considering all of the analysis, with Obama’s second term administration showing a strong willingness in reshaping its leadership on climate change, China and the U.S. have three common tasks, namely “ABCD” - global Accountability, win-win Business, Co-progressive collaboration and thought leaders’ Dialogue - to fulfill in terms of fighting against climate change. The U.S. and China are both prioritizing the issue of climate change. They are looking to energy efficiency as a primary means to reduce carbon emissions and as an area for new jobs and economic growth.

Task A: Global Accountability. China and the U.S. should demonstrate their global accountability and take all-round diplomatic efforts to make a breakthrough for Post-2015 Durban Platform negotiations. Firstly, the reduction of carbon emissions is at the core of collective action against climate change, particularly burden sharing for China and the U.S. To begin with, China and the U.S. can help to work out the unequivocal commitments on global emission vision associated with common but differentiated principle(s). Durban Platform and KP2 (the second commitment period for Annex I parties under the Protocol) should be treated reciprocally and correlated. Secondly, common and all-round diplomatic efforts should be undertaken by China and the U.S. for achieving a global consensus in 2014 UN Climate Change Summit. Thirdly, the U.S. agrees with China that adaptation measures – cope with climate change by technology and market measures – are the preferred ways to address climate-induced social economic impacts. Thus, each country hopes to shift the climate negotiation focus from mitigation (i.e., reduce carbon emission) to adaptation.

Task B: Win-Win Business. Climate change, in its core, is a kind of economic challenge. The Durban Platform negotiations should be seen as an opportunity for enhancing economic sectors during crises by linking climate-resilient economy and low-carbon development. China and the U.S. are both faced with the unprecedented extensive business opportunities for win-win cooperation. The burgeoning new energy and low carbon business will create thousands of billion carbon economy. In the 2013 Obama Climate Change Action Plan, President Obama maintained clean energy issues as a high priority for his administration which has been associated with jobs, competitiveness and future.[20] China will spend $293 billion in clean and alternative energy investment before 2020, and the clean energy market will likely amount to $555 billion in 2020. By cooperation with China – the largest global market, U.S. can certainly achieve economic growth and enhanced competitiveness. Coal made up about 70% of China’s electricity generation over the past year. In the clean coal area, GE and the Chinese company Shenhua signed a joint venture agreement on coal-gasification technology. Relations also have been strained in the renewable energy arena. After U.S. manufacturers of solar photovoltaic cells complained that China was dumping solar cells priced below cost in U.S. markets, the U.S. imposed import duties and other sanctions to stop the dumping. A strong agreement on co-operative climate change action could potentially aid both countries in overcoming frictions. Kerry highlighted recent Chinese-U.S. private sector partnership to develop smart-grid technology, saying it was essential for enabling both countries to introduce more renewable energy into their electricity mix and would also create millions of jobs. Kerry said that the U.S. and China could in future show leadership by cooperating in a number of areas related to energy efficiency that did not require international treaties, private sector investment in the U.S. energy sector as "vital" to the economies of both countries[21].

Task C: Co-progressive Collaboration. A low carbon society is both the U.S. and China’s common and progressive vision, and requires both mutual support and concerted action. At the governmental level, both should struggle for the upshot of concerted transition to low carbon society. As the most advanced country leading in energy know-how, the U.S. can assist China in improving fossil fuel efficiency, developing renewable energy, and building carbon credit market. Through Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate and, China and the U.S. can work in clean projects, technology innovation and green education on climate change. It also seems very likely that bilateral dialogues can improve China-U.S. understandings on energy policy, and help both restructuring energy and industrial development model through the Strategic and Economic Dialogue (SED).

Task D: Thought leaders’ Dialogue. It’s also time to build the U.S.-China Sustained Thought Leader’s Dialogue on Climate Change, which may provide the foundation for mutual understanding on the issues that divide them. Such dialogue mechanism would also have positive implications for Post 2015 Durban Platform negotiations. Most importantly, China and the U.S. thought leaders should pay much more attention to Post-Cancun Regime building. It is incumbent on China and the U.S. to share concrete responsibilities in the post Cancun regime building process, and both countries should also work together on the roadmap and regime innovations as the international community is losing expectations for Durban. China and the U.S. can help to work out unequivocal commitments on a global emissions vision associated with the “common but differentiated” principle, and should also shift global attention from mitigation to adaptation measures – to cope with climate change by technology and market measures and to help the least developed and small islands countries which are most vulnerable to climate-induced security challenges. The responsibility for thought leaders in China and the U.S. is to maintain a strategic focus on the common challenges of global climate change, as well as climate-induced security issues that will continue to threaten global stability and development. Thought leaders in both countries should improve the U.S.-China coordination of climate change diplomacy, and influence the public by their shared views on climate-induced security governance.

Consequently, Climate change has emerged as one of the top security challenges of the early 21st century. The former U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu stated recently that “what the U.S. and China do in the coming decades will help shape the fate of the world.”[22] The important factor in the future of climate governance is ongoing dialogue and cooperation between China and the U.S. For the most part, China and the U.S. are central to mitigating global warming for current and future generations. China and the U.S. are central to the international community contributing to the incremental progress and successes at the Post 2015 Durban Platform negotiations. As Kenneth Lieberthal said, “Recalling Chinese leaders' recent emphasis on establishing a new type of major-power relationship, Sino-U.S. cooperation is of high complement and durability in the field of climate.” As the international society works to build effective global climate change governance during the forthcoming 2014 UN Climate Summit and 2013 Warsaw Climate Change Conference, it’s the time to improve China-U.S. Climate Cooperation to Co-progress.

Source of documents：Global Review