Photograph by Greg Baker / Getty Images
words by miranda green
As 250 countries and the world’s top leaders gather in Belem, Brazil, for the 30th Conference of the Parties to discuss our collective climate future, the U.S. opted to send no official delegates. The move marks the first time in history our federal government has entirely snubbed the United Nations’ annual climate summit. Several unofficial attendees—including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who blasted the lack of official attendees and called American climate policy “dumb”—are there, instead.
Filling the vacuum of global climate leadership? China.
There’s a YouTube video I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve watched one too many times. It’s a compilation of cuts from President Trump’s first term of him saying the word “China.”
As it reveals, he says the word a lot. Normally in a mocking tone, sometimes threatening, and often derisive. In fact, Trump’s main nemesis throughout his two presidencies has been the world’s second most populous country.
He’s blasted China for what he’s characterized as bad trade deals and blamed the country for ruining the United States’ steel, manufacturing, and auto industries. More recently, Trump blamed China for profiting disproportionally from global free trade and instituted significant tariffs that escalated into a game of trade-war chicken.
But for all of his strong-arming with the country, Trump isn’t trying to compete with China on a key area where they’ve come out far ahead globally–clean energy.
China currently produces over 80% of the world’s solar panels. It surpassed Tesla as the leading producer of electric vehicles in 2023 and is now responsible for producing more than 70% of the global EV market. After vowing in 2021 to end (with some veracity) new overseas coal projects, China invested heavily in clean-energy projects in more than 50 countries. The country now has the most new nuclear power plants under construction, and dominates the market for rare earth metals—an important component of battery storage.
China, like the U.S., signed the international Paris Climate Agreement 10 years ago in a commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The U.S., by comparison, removed itself from the agreement twice: both times under Trump. While former President Joe Biden championed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, intending to boost U.S. manufacturing in clean energy and an investment in clean-tech jobs, Trump pushed Congress this year to shrink those initiatives.
At the U.N. General Assembly this past September, Trump called climate change a “con job,” and pressured diplomats at the White House last month to table plans to create a global shipping climate tax. The U.S. is now re-embracing fossil fuels, announcing executive orders focused on expanding natural gas drilling and opening up more offshore oil exploration. This is happening at the same time offshore wind projects are halted, solar grants ended, and electric vehicle subsidies pulled.
With COP30 as the backdrop, China—once considered a climate boogeyman as the source of the largest share of annual greenhouse gas emissions—is now demonstrating an incredible investment in clean energy technologies while situating itself as a global leader on the green transition … just as the U.S. is turning away.
China is far from a perfect leader when it comes to climate commitments. For one, its motives aren’t humanitarian, nor apologetic: They’re economical.
In a Yale Environment 360 analysis, Isabel Hilton writes:
“There are many ways to judge climate leadership: They include the quality and consistency of policy, the speed and effectiveness of carbon reduction, and the role a country plays in the global effort, including in support to less developed countries.
When China became the biggest carbon emitter by volume in 2005, its leadership did not contest the science. Importantly, they understood climate change as a severe threat but also as an enormous industrial opportunity. If the world needed to transition away from fossil fuels and towards clean energy, China resolved to be the supplier of the enabling goods and technologies.”
China is now leading where more traditional climate champions—namely, the most industrialized nations—are faltering.
Instead of sending delegates to COP30, the White House sent Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to a different conference.
The two flew last week to Athens, Greece, to promote fossil fuels. “There is no energy transition—there is just energy addition,” Burgum told reporters there.
The European Union also scaled back its leadership capacity on climate initiatives, as several member countries faced tough elections with populist parties championing fossil fuels. The EU further disappointed environmentalists after softening an anti-deforestation law and moving to push its start date. The EU also failed to finalize its own climate-mitigation targets by COP’s September 30 deadline.
It’s part of a trend that André Corrêa do Lago, the president of this year’s COP and a Brazilian diplomat, framed as the wealthiest global countries losing interest in climate change.
Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping told delegates at the U.N. General Assembly in September that the “green and low-carbon transition is the trend of our time.” The focus is already giving China wins: A new study found that China’s CO2 emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months, thanks in part to its “rapid adoption of electric vehicles.”
China’s investment in renewable energy also helps other countries approach their own climate targets.
As Somini Sengupta and Brad Plumer write for The New York Times:
“Having saturated its own market with solar panels, wind turbines and batteries, Chinese companies are now exporting their wares to energy-hungry countries in the developing world. What’s more, they’re investing billions of dollars in factories that make things like solar panels in Vietnam and electric cars in Brazil.”
“China is coming up with solutions that are for everyone, not just China,” Corrêa do Lago told The Guardian. “Solar panels are cheaper, they’re so competitive [compared with fossil fuel energy] that they are everywhere now.”
Newsom was blunt when he said how China’s dominance looked for the U.S.:
“The United States of America is as dumb as we want to be on this topic,” he told Reuters in Belem, adding that Republicans were letting China take ownership of the growing market and that the country “will dominate in the next great global industry.”
During Trump’s recent Asia trip, he signed a flurry of deals with countries that indicate the U.S. is jockeying for a stronger hold on rare earth minerals to stay competitive in electricity and tech innovation—to say nothing of the materials required for expanding renewable energy capabilities, such as solar or wind.
While climate change might be a backburner issue for some developed nations, electricity capacity is not. With the rise of AI and data centers and the subsequent battle of tech giants to come out on top, there’s a projected global energy rush.
The overlap of clean energy and innovation is becoming more evident every day. The economic and business opportunities around embracing renewable energy are what former Secretary of State John Kerry says could be what brings the U.S. back to the table on climate.
What I’m banking on is showing people that the transition to a clean energy economy is, in fact, the greatest economic opportunity the world has ever known. There are 8 billion people who want electricity, need electricity in the world today—1 billion of them actually don’t have it yet—and it’s going to go up to 10 billion in the next 20 or 30 years. So that’s a huge marketplace … And by the way, the best of capitalism—you can make a lot of money as that transition is implemented.
Time will tell whether that potential money speaks to the White House.
While there’s been progress at past COP conferences, it hasn’t been enough to slow down the impacts of greenhouse gases. Going into this year’s meeting, some modeling shows that the world is already likely to blow past the Paris Agreement’s target, projecting the globe to warm between 2.3-3.4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages by the end of the century.
During opening remarks on Monday, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said the world needed a roadmap to “overcome” fossil fuel dependence.
Here’s what could be on the table:
● A forest fund: Brazil wants a major focus on this year’s meeting to be a plan that protects the Amazon rainforest. The country aims to create a multibillion-dollar fund that would pay countries to keep their forests intact at around $1.60 per acre.
● Climate finance: Leaders last year set a target, called a New Collective Quantified Goal, to deliver at least $300 billion annually for developing countries to partake in climate action by 2035. This year’s COP kicked off with a roadmap target that increases funds to $1.3 trillion, in part by increasing taxes on polluting activities.
● Adaptation: Another area of focus will be a sobering one: preparing the world for the impacts of climate change through adaptation. The U.N.’s environmental arm released an Adaptation Gap Report this year that found the private sector could provide around $50 billion annually in adaptation finance, if backed by policy. Delegates are working toward codifying “indicators” of adaptation from a list of 10,000 different options and eventually creating a global adaptation scorecard.
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While the US Sits Out the World’s Biggest Climate Summit, China Is Stepping Up
