The U.S. and China might resume climate talks soon, Jerry Brown says

But former California governor Jerry Brown (D), who founded the California-China Climate Institute at the University of California at Berkeley, remains optimistic that the world’s two biggest greenhouse gas emitters will resume their cooperation on climate change soon.

“I think it’s only temporary,” Brown said in a phone interview with The Climate 202 on Friday, referring to Beijing’s decision to suspend climate talks with the United States in retaliation for the visit of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to Taiwan.

“I assume that China has a level of rationality among its leadership elite,” he added. “And it's totally irrational not to cooperate with America on climate. It is — no matter what you think about Taiwan.”

Despite the breakdown in communications at the national level, Brown said leaders of the California-China Climate Institute have continued to engage with their peers at Chinese universities and research institutions.

“At the subnational level, China is still open for discussion,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that we’ve had some robust dialogue, but we’re still planning meetings, and there’s still an exchange of emails and information.”

Brown said he is not attending COP27, although he will be closely monitoring the talks from his ranch in Colusa County, Calif. But he predicted that Mary Nichols, vice chair of the institute and former chair of the California Air Resources Board, will probably try to meet with Chinese officials at the summit.  

Asked whether it was a mistake for Pelosi to visit Taipei, Brown demurred.

“Some people blame China,” he said. “Some people say America was provocative unduly. Look, there are multiple perspectives. My one big perspective is that climate has to occupy a much bigger place … in the minds of most political leaders.”

Kerry’s conundrum

At last year’s COP26 climate negotiations in Scotland, the United States and China issued a joint pledge to take “enhanced climate actions” to meet the more ambitious goal of the 2015 Paris agreement: limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels.

The announcement came after nearly 30 meetings between U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry and veteran Chinese climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua. The men have known each other for years, and in 2014, they helped broker an agreement that paved the way for the Paris accord.

Since Beijing broke off talks with Washington, Kerry and Xie have not scheduled additional meetings, according to a State Department spokeswoman. But Brown predicted that Kerry would try to reconnect with his Chinese counterpart in person during the COP27 talks in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

The State Department spokeswoman, Whitney Smith, declined to comment on the matter. But Kerry recently told the New York Times of Xie: “We’ve sent each other a few messages trying to figure out how to resume.”

Still, Kerry emphasized that the decision ultimately rests with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is skipping the climate conference.

Biden’s absence

Meanwhile, President Biden will not attend the world leaders’ summit on Monday and Tuesday that kicks off the conference, given a scheduling conflict with Tuesday’s midterm elections, in which Democrats are projected to fare poorly.

Instead, Biden will travel to Sharm el-Sheikh on Friday before heading to Bali, Indonesia, for the Group of 20 summit, the White House confirmed last week.

Some observers have expressed concern that Biden’s initial absence could create a leadership vacuum. But Brown praised the president for attending the summit at all, citing the expected absence of Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“He’s showing up; he’s taking the plane ride,” Brown said. “That’s showing goodwill. So I wouldn’t argue about the calendar date.”

It’s imperative, Brown added, that Biden and Xi “find a way to talk” at the G-20.

“They can’t just talk about little things,” he said. “They need to talk about how China can coexist with America. … Maybe both are going to have to change to make enough room for their being on the same planet together.”

International climate

In a first, COP27 agenda includes ‘loss and damage’

The official agenda at COP27 includes a discussion about whether rich nations should compensate poor countries for mounting damages linked to climate change, marking the first time the controversial topic will be formally negotiated, Gloria Dickie and Kate Abnett report for Reuters.

Delegates from nearly 200 countries agreed to debate the issue, known as “loss and damage” in the parlance of international climate talks, despite long-standing resistance from the United States and the European Union.

Pressure to address the issue has grown amid intensifying weather events in vulnerable countries, including this year's floods in Pakistan that displaced hundreds of thousands of people and caused about $30 billion in damage, The Washington Post’s Sarah Kaplan and Susannah George report. Pakistan is leading a bloc of more than 100 developing nations calling for a dedicated loss-and-damage fund that hard-hit countries can rely on for immediate assistance after a disaster.

Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres on Monday pushed for the creation of a “historic pact” between wealthier and developing countries to meet global climate goals, emphasizing that the United States and China have “a particular responsibility to join efforts to make this pact a reality,” The Post’s Allyson Chiu reports.

“We are in the fight of our lives, and we are losing,” Guterres said during the opening ceremony of the world leaders’ summit, adding, “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.”

Britain’s Sunak to announce climate investments at COP27

Britain’s new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, will unveil several climate investments at COP27 in an effort to reassert the United Kingdom’s leadership on climate change one year after hosting COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland.

Sunak will pledge that under the U.K. commitment to spend $13.1 billion on international climate finance, the country will triple funding for climate adaptation as part of that budget, from $565.4 million in 2019 to $1.6 billion in 2025.

In addition, Britain will launch the Forests and Climate Leaders’ Partnership, a group that initially will include 20 countries and will meet twice a year to prevent loss of the world’s forests.

“By honoring the pledges we made in Glasgow, we can turn our struggle against climate change into a global mission for new jobs and clean growth,” Sunak will tell other world leaders on Monday.

The fresh commitments come after Sunak faced backlash from environmentalists and some world leaders for his initial decision not to attend COP27 because of other pressing domestic duties. In a reversal, Sunak said last week that he would attend the summit after all and that “there is no long-term prosperity without action on climate change.”

In a shift, U.S. says companies are pivotal to climate talks’ success

The Biden administration is pushing for corporations to strengthen their climate commitments during COP27 and pony up more money to help poor countries cope with climate disasters, reflecting a shift in the U.S. approach to international climate negotiations, The Post’s Evan Halper and Timothy Puko report.

While government action typically dominates the talks, this year corporations are in the spotlight as nations grapple with how to finance and implement previously made commitments amid the war in Ukraine and other global crises.

John D. Podesta, a senior adviser to President Biden on climate change, said in an interview that government funding alone cannot cover most of what vulnerable countries actually need to cope with the ravages of global warming.

“We’re talking billions when the need is trillions,” he said. “We’ve got to unlock that [private-sector] capacity for people to make investments in building a clean-energy future or else we’ll miss both the development goals and the climate goals.” 

On the Hill

Manchin slams Biden’s comments on shutting down coal plants

The White House spent Saturday trying to tamp down criticism from Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) of President Biden’s comments suggesting coal plants across the country should be shut down, The Post’s Eugene Scott and John Wagner report.

While speaking at an event Friday in Carlsbad, Calif., to highlight the Democratic Party’s achievements heading into the midterm elections, Biden championed clean energy and suggested that coal plants should be a thing of the past. “We’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar,” he said.

Those remarks prompted a rebuke from Manchin, who represents a coal-producing state and has long-standing financial ties to the coal industry.

“Comments like these are the reason the American people are losing trust in President Biden,” Manchin said, adding that the remarks were “outrageous and divorced from reality.”

Manchin’s family’s business has made millions by taking waste coal from long-abandoned mines and selling it to a power plant in West Virginia. The public spat between the two prominent Democrats comes days before the midterms, in which the party risks losing control of both chambers of Congress.

Republicans on House panel issue report on ‘war on domestic energy’

Republicans on the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Monday released a report on what they described as “Democrats’ war on domestic energy production.”

The 32-page document illustrates how GOP lawmakers on the panel would seek to scrutinize President Biden’s energy policies if their party takes control of the House in the midterm elections.

The report alleges that Biden and Democrats have “waged war on America’s energy producers, causing energy prices to skyrocket for the American people, killing good paying jobs in the energy sector, and jeopardizing our nation’s security.”

It urges the administration to take several steps to boost fossil fuel production and exports, despite calls from leading scientists to swiftly phase out fossil fuel use to avert a climate catastrophe.

“Instead of demonizing an industry that provides good-paying jobs and affordable energy for all Americans, Republicans are committed to promoting policy solutions that unleash domestic energy production and put the interests of the American people first,” Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a statement.

In the atmosphere

• The U.N. holds a climate summit every year. Is it actually working? — Shannon Osaka for The Post
• Delta and other firms are struggling to meet sky-high climate pledges — Steven Mufson for The Post 
• As climate change worsens, Egypt is begging families to have fewer kids — Siobhán O'Grady and Heba Farouk Mahfouz for The Post

Viral

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