The special envoy for climate affairs told the Chinese leadership that the environment was not related to politics.
US Special Envoy for Climate Change John Kerry called on Chinese leaders to pursue “higher goals” to curb rising global temperatures, stressing that the climate crisis is not related to politics. Kerry said this during a conversation with reporters on Thursday.
During Kerry’s visit to China, senior Chinese diplomats told him that the issue of climate change could not be separated from the wider political disputes between the two countries.
“I told them that the climate is not an ideological, guerrilla or geostrategic weapon,” Kerry told reporters during a conference call after two days of talks with his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua in northern China’s Tianjin.
According to Kerry, although China is working hard to tackle rising greenhouse gas emissions, it now has more emissions than all OECD countries, and Beijing “can do more.”