12/17/2020 The New Geopolitics of Climate Change – The Diplomat

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MAGAZINE

The New
Geopolitics of
Climate Change
As climate action becomes
a question of geopolitical
competition, the world’s
major economies look
ready to finally take serious
steps to cut greenhouse
gas emissions.

By Scott Moore
December 01, 2020

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12/17/2020 The New Geopolitics of Climate Change – The Diplomat

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, left, and

Vice Minister of Ecology and Environment of
China Zhao Yingmin, second left, arrive for a
press conference at the COP25 climate talks
summit in Madrid, Spain,Thursday, Dec. 12,
2019.
Credit: AP Photo/Manu Fernandez

For the world’s climate activists, the last half of

2020 has been both the best and the worst of
times. Even as the pandemic raged, at the
September meeting of the United Nations
General Assembly Chinese leader Xi Jinping
unexpectedly pledged to make the world’s
second-largest economy carbon neutral by 2060.
Weeks later, Japan, the world’s third-largest
economy, one-upped Beijing by pledging to do
the same thing, but 10 years earlier. And in
early November, the American people elected
Joe Biden president on by far the most
ambitious climate policy platform ever put
forward by the world’s largest economy.

Less encouragingly, the same period also

brought an unrelenting stream of bad news on
the state of the world’s climate: In September
scientists reported that two of Antarctica’s
largest glaciers were close to collapse,
threatening several meters of additional sea
level rise; in early October five tropical cyclones
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12/17/2020 The New Geopolitics of Climate Change – The Diplomat

formed in the Atlantic Ocean for only the

second time in recorded history; and just weeks
later came the heartbreaking report that half
the Great Barrier Reef’s corals have died off just
since 1995.

This mixed picture leaves the world standing at

a familiar crossroads. In the face of rapidly-
accumulating evidence of an impending climate
catastrophe, the world’s major economies,
buoyed by political change in the United States,
look ready to finally take serious steps to cut
greenhouse gas emissions. But there have been
false hopes before, in the mid-1990s, when the
U.S., then the world’s largest emitter, declined to
ratify the Kyoto Protocol; in the late 2000s, when
major climate legislation stalled in the U.S.
Congress; and in the mid-2010s, when the
conclusion of the Paris Agreement failed to shift
policy and markets as much as its architects
hoped, in part because the U.S. once again took
a hard political turn against climate action and
dismantled its climate policy.

Will this time be different?

In one very important respect, the answer is

clearly yes. Each previous period of hope for
ambitious climate action depended on the
United States’ willingness to back international
cooperation on climate change, and a robust
regulatory regime to underpin it. This time,
though, is decidedly different. Ambitious
climate action, like Beijing’s and Tokyo’s
seemingly dueling carbon pledges, is
increasingly driven not by a vision of
cooperation, but one of geopolitical competition.
This conceptual shift is matched by a tactical
one: Instead of an emphasis on domestic
regulatory sticks to drive down greenhouse gas
emissions, the focus is moving to one more
focused on carrots to promote technological
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innovation and development – the better to

compete with would-be rivals.

The world still needs a healthy dose of

cooperation and regulation to tackle climate
change. But the new geopolitics that now shape
climate policy offers renewed hope that this
time, major economies might finally produce a
durable plan to tackle the climate crisis. These
new dynamics are especially important given
the accelerating impacts of climate change,
which make it increasingly clear the world will
not only have to slash its carbon emissions, but
eventually take more carbon dioxide out of the
atmosphere than it puts in.

In another key break with the past, it’s now

China, not the United States, that stands at the
center of the new geopolitics of climate change.
While America’s fickle domestic politics have
historically been the fulcrum on which
international climate plans teetered, they now
turn on the world’s reaction to the rise of China.

Read the full story here, in The Diplomat

magazine.

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CURRENT ISSUE: DECEMBER 2020

The New Geopolitics of

Climate Change
This month, we look at the prospects for
meaningful progress on climate change
through the lens of the geopolitical
calculations being made by the world’s
https://thediplomat.com/2020/12/the-new-geopolitics-of-climate-change/ 4/5
12/17/2020 The New Geopolitics of Climate Change – The Diplomat

two

largest emitters: the United States and

China. We also outline the international
costs of Australia’s recalcitrance on
climate issues, examine the risks of habitat
loss (and efforts to combat it) in Southeast
Asia, and shine a light on Afghanistan’s
biggest fight yet: the battle against climate
change. And, of course, we offer a range
of reporting, analysis, and opinion from
across the region.

VIEW ISSUE

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Magazine Asia-Pacific climate change Biden climate change policy

China climate change policies U.S.-China climate change

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