For much of 2022, the entire planet has been struggling to cope with extreme weather events, ranging from brutal heatwaves and severe droughts in some regions to record rainfall and catastrophic flooding in others.

Despite this, in early August, Beijing suspended ongoing U.S.-China talks on climate change in response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. While some climate experts have argued that what matters most in the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is for the United States and China to take action domestically, the suspension of talks represents a shift in the effort to shield the climate agenda from geopolitics and has implications for the ability of each country, and the world, to meet essential reduction targets.

In conversation with Alex Wang on November 1, 2022, Michael Davidson and Joanna Lewis discuss the significance of the downturn in U.S.-China relations on multilateral climate action.

2:22 How will U.S.-China tensions affect COP27?

6:24 How important is U.S.-China cooperation to global climate action?

9:18 Can the U.S. and China cooperate after COP27?

15:00 Will U.S.-China competition benefit or harm climate action efforts?

25:30 How can the U.S. support domestic climate action initiatives?

30:38 Why is energy security so important?

About the speakers: https://www.ncuscr.org/event/us-china-climate-action/ 

Follow Michael Davidson on Twitter:  @east_winds

Follow Joanna Lewis on Twitter: @JoannaILewis

Follow Alex Wang on Twitter: @greenlawchina

Subscribe to the National Committee on YouTube for video of this interview. Follow us on Twitter (@ncuscr) and Instagram (@ncuscr).