BAKU, Azerbaijan — The coming U.S. retreat from leadership on global climate policy comes amid a dawning reality: For much of the world, China already calls the shots.
Beijing’s decadeslong effort to dominate the world’s clean energy economy is enabling it to woo tight business alliances with governments in Africa, Asia and Latin America — without insisting on the labor and environmental safeguards that the United States and European Union typically demand. Those countries, in turn, are taking China’s side in disputes with the U.S. and Europe about trade policies or efforts to make rich nations step up their international climate aid.
And as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office, promising to walk away from the Paris climate agreement, some diplomats at the U.N.-sponsored talks in Azerbaijan said they hope China will fill the void by championing steep cuts in greenhouse gas pollution. Trump has also pledged to shred the Biden administration’s clean energy policies that were designed to weaken Chinese control of key technologies.
“We will need China’s continued leadership,” U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell said midway through the two-week COP29 summit that is expected to wrap up this weekend, in a speech that sought to anoint the country as a preeminent climate power broker. He urged Beijing to demonstrate to other nations that “stronger targets drive investment” — a message that, in a different context, might have served as a sales pitch for President Joe Biden’s big-spending clean energy policies.
