BELÉM, Brazil — The European Union’s new pollution-cutting targets are insufficient, China’s climate envoy told POLITICO on the sidelines of this year’s COP30 conference while also condemning the “bad example” set by the absent United States.
In a rare interview Monday, Liu Zhenmin rejected criticism of China’s climate efforts, which his EU counterpart Wopke Hoekstra recently described as “clearly disappointing,” and argued that developed nations including the 27-country bloc should lessen their carbon pollution faster.
But Liu also expressed hope that China and the EU could step up their cooperation on climate issues — and saved his harshest criticism for the Trump administration’s decision to once again withdraw from the Paris Agreement and skip the COP30 summit in Belém, Brazil.
“It’s terrible. The absence of the U.S. really creates a very bad example. It impacts the integrity of climate conservation,” he said. “So we hope that the U.S. really can return to the Paris Agreement and return to this multilateral process in the coming years.”
