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Climate crisis "is not a bilateral issue. This is not an ideological issue. This is real life unfolding before our eyes as a consequence of choices we make or don't make," said U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry during his meeting with China's Special Envoy for Climate Change Xie Zhenhua, which lasted for over four hours on July 17 in Beijing. Global warming is a common challenge faced by all mankind, Xie Zhenhua also recommended during the talks, we need to put aside differences and find common ground.

The climate issue has become a part of real life with no time left to find a solution. You only need to stand outdoors for five minutes on the streets of Washington or Beijing if you want to understand the urgency of addressing this crisis.

The northern hemisphere has "baked under extreme heat," as Reuters reported this week, with temperatures soaring to 49 degrees Celsius in parts of the southwestern United States, and Canadian wildfires continuing to burn for weeks, which has become the country's "worst" fire season on record, as multiple media agencies including The Washington Post and BBC said. As of July 5, wildfires in Canada have emitted over 724 million tons of carbon dioxide, the Chinese Academy of Sciences estimated.

China also braces for a "furnace" summer as the temperature in Beijing was above 35 degrees Celsius for 27 days as of July 18, which broke a 23-year-old record. However, more frequent and intense heat waves worldwide are predicted soon, the UN warned on Tuesday. 

Fortunately, both China and the U.S. have shown their willingness to tackle global warming. In 2020, China announced that it would strive to achieve a carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. The country's Foreign Relations Law, which came into effect on July 1, also delivered a clear message: China will participate in global environmental governance, strengthen international cooperation in green industries, and jointly seek the construction of a global ecological civilization.

Similarly, the Joe Biden administration announced on July 14 that it is making available $20 billion from a federal "green bank" to develop clean energy projects such as residential heat pumps, electric vehicle charging stations, and community cooling centers.

No single country can tackle climate change alone. Since our planet is about to pass tipping points that will lead to catastrophic environmental damage, we are expected to work together to find solutions that really work; otherwise, it will be too late. As the world's two largest economies, China and the U.S. need more sincere and pragmatic cooperation on this problem.

However, political differences have repeatedly cast a shadow over climate cooperation. It has not only been weaponized by the Donald Trump administration, which imposed a 30-percent tariff on imports of solar panels from China in 2018, but three years later President Biden issued an import ban on solar panels produced in China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on accusations of "human rights violations."

As the world's largest investor in renewable energy, China produced three-quarters of the world's solar panels and related components. U.S. trade restrictions on China have not only poured cold water on the development of renewable energy but set up obstacles for Sino-U.S. cooperation on climate issues.

Furthermore, the U.S. criticism of Kerry's visit to China has shown an inappropriate attitude held by some in Washington toward bilateral climate cooperation. For example, Republicans described Biden's climate envoy as "too soft on China, the world's biggest polluter," and "putting Chinese interests above those of the United States," according to The New York Times. This extreme and narrow statement exposed the status quo of Washington trying to label nearly all Sino-U.S. issues as political.

Should both countries remain addicted to competition on other issues and refuse to jointly tackle climate change, it would be tantamount to "rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic," Dan Kammen, an energy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, warned.

"Decoupling" when tackling global challenges will lead to a lose-lose situation. As two major carbon emitters, China and the U.S. are expected to seek consensus and work together, but the latter has recently made a series of unreasonable demands on China, which for example, is asked to take on more emission reduction responsibilities, increase funds for climate issues, and no longer participate in relevant negotiations as a developing country. All of these make people doubt the sincerity and determination of the U.S. to work with China.

Hence, the Biden administration is expected to stop politicizing and weaponizing the climate issue, which will also become the first step of reviving practical cooperation between the two countries.

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