U.S., China Say They Will Cooperate to Tackle Climate Change


Dominic Lau, Bloomberg News

JAENSCHWALDE, GERMANY - AUGUST 20: Steam rises from cooling towers at the Jaenschwalde coal-fired power plant on August 20, 2010 at Jaenschwalde, Germany. The Jaenschwalde power plant is one of the biggest single producers of CO2 gas in Europe. The area of northern Saxony and southern Brandenburg is scarred with active and former lignite coal mines that feed local power plants like Jaenschwalde, and a large-scale project is underway to flood the massive pits and convert them into lakes for tourism. The Lausitz and Middle German Mining and Administration Association (LMBV) is converting a total of 51 former mines into lakes, and a similar project is planned for former mines in neighboring Poland. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images) 

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. and China are committed to cooperating to tackle climate change, they said in a joint statement after meetings between senior envoys last week.

The two nations will work together and with other parties to support implementation of the Paris Agreement and to promote a successful U.N. climate change conference in Glasgow later this year, they said.

The U.S. and China support the Paris Agreement’s aim to limit the increase in the global average temperature to below 2 degrees Celcius and to try to restrict it to 1.5 degrees Celcius, according to the statement.

The statement followed discussions in Shanghai on April 15 and 16 between U.S. presidential climate envoy John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua. Kerry’s visit was part of a tour that’s so far included India, the U.K., Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates.

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