WASHINGTON — For years, cutting carbon emissions to stave off the worst impacts of climate change was routinely near the top of the agenda at talks between the leaders of the United States and China.
Not anymore.
As President Donald Trump hosts President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida this week, the world’s two largest economies and carbon polluters are taking dramatically divergent paths on climate policy.
The Chinese government recently canceled construction of more than 100 new coal-fired power plants and plans to invest at least $360 billion in green energy projects by 2020. It is a building boom expected to create an estimated 13 million jobs. China already leads the world in total installed solar and wind capacity.
Trump, who has said global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese to hurt the U.S. economy, signed an executive order last week that aims to roll back Obama-era policies regulating carbon emissions. He has pledged to reverse decades of decline in coal mining, which now accounts for fewer than 75,000 U.S. jobs.
“Clean energy is the next, largest global market,” said Barbara Finamore, Asia director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a U.S.-based environmental group. “The U.S. risks losing out.”
With Trump threatening to pull out of the Paris climate accord negotiated by the Obama administration, Xi is poised to become the world’s foremost leader on climate change. Signed by nearly 200 nations, the 2014 agreement calls for holding global temperature increases to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in hopes of preventing devastating droughts, storms and sea level rise.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, Xi called the Paris accord a “hard-won achievement” and urged signatories to “stick to it.”
The White House declined to comment Wednesday on whether climate change will even be mentioned at Mar-a-Lago. U.S. officials are instead expected to focus on enlisting China’s cooperation on curbing the North Korean nuclear threat.
While China eclipsed the United States as the world’s top carbon polluter more than a decade ago, it is also now outpacing the U.S. in transitioning to a cleaner energy portfolio. China is currently generating about 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, compared to about 13 percent in the U.S.