China US Need To Work Together On Climate Change

Kenneth Lieberthal, a China expert and previously an Asia National Security Council officer under Clinton, said that during the Obama Presidency the US and China should work together to combat changes to the climate.

The comment was made at the release of a report by Lieberthal and David Sandalow, also a former Clinton advisor, on behalf of the Brookings Institution in Washington, which advocates co-operation on climate change by the US and China.

Lieberthal also said, at a forum in Beijing’s Tsinghua University, that the US obviously wishes to boost the quality and openness of its interchange with China.

Global warming will figure highly in such strategic discussions.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, while making her first visit to China in early February as senior US diplomat, constantly referred to changes in the climate and lower emissions energy as subjects for reciprocal collaboration and work.

The two countries have often been at odds over security, human rights and commerce and they both have the highest levels of carbon emissions from the use of fossil fuels.

Lieberthal said a summit meeting, involving President Hu Jintao and President Obama, concentrating on reducing harmful emissions and cleaner energy, will be of assistance in overcoming doubts in both countries.

It would also improve the chance of agreement at the next Kyoto Protocol meeting in Copenhagen in December, 2009.

He added a long-term attitude of cooperation might also be of value in cutting the air of distrust between the two governments

Lieberthal’s proposals were commended at the forum by Cheng Siwei, previously a top Chinese lawmaker, as being realistic and significant.

Cheng Siwei said the report fully takes into account that shared expectations and agreements are very important in politics.

China and the US, the two countries with the highest levels of carbon emissions together accounting for approximately 40% of the total for the whole world, disagreed for a long time about coping with global warming.

Former President George Bush repudiated the Kyoto Protocol and maintained that China and India, among others, should not be excluded.

China persisted in the view that the developed nations should carry the greatest responsibility for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

President Obama has already made clear that tackling climate change will be high on his administration’s agenda.

In a recent report from the Asia Society’s Center of US-China Relations and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, US-China collaboration was said to be paramount in combating global warming.

Steven Chu, just now nominated as Secretary for Energy, was co-author.