This Brave New World by Anja Manuel

Author:Anja Manuel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

China is moving at a breakneck gallop and India at a more moderate canter to fix its environmental problems. It is solidly in the United States’ interest to support these efforts if it wants to avoid irreversible climate change. To move China and India to a less carbon-intensive economy, Europe and the United States should lure them with incentives. Shaming or bullying them into action has been unsuccessful since the Kyoto negotiations twenty-five years ago.

One such incentive-based approach was the civilian nuclear deal we negotiated with India from 2005 to 2008 and which I described earlier. If coal is not the answer to India’s need for electricity—although it will stay an important part of the mix—added power must come from renewables or nuclear power. The renewables sector in India is still in its relative infancy. The civilian nuclear deal is not yet implemented due to a dispute over nuclear liability law. When it does go into effect, India plans to build new nuclear reactors with 25 gigawatts (GW) of capacity. By increasing the production of clean nuclear energy to that amount, a Stanford scientist estimated, India would reduce its carbon emissions by more than 130 million tons each year. (For comparison, the full range of emission cuts planned by the European Union under the Kyoto Protocol will total 200 million tons per year.) If new nuclear power reactors can be constructed with the latest safety features, and international monitoring ensures that accidents are unlikely to occur, the U.S.-India civilian nuclear deal will be a real win for climate change. This type of large-impact, bilateral initiative may help India get around the multilateral bickering of the UN climate change negotiations and have a positive impact on the environment.

Similarly, the United States is learning that bilateral cooperation—not lecturing—is the way to make progress with China on combatting climate change. The breakthrough agreement announced by Presidents Obama and Xi in late 2014 is a case in point and should serve as a model for future bilateral and international climate negotiations. Under the agreement, the United States committed to emit 26 percent less greenhouse gases in 2025 than it did in 2005. China agreed, for the first time ever, to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030. China also announced that clean energy will account for 20 percent of the country’s total energy production by 2030. To reach this goal China will have to build between 800 and 1,000 large, carbon-free power plants. This is a move well beyond the status quo for both countries.

Chinese officials have told me repeatedly that the U.S. decision unilaterally to reduce its carbon emissions was a great example that made it easier for them to push their own government to do the same.

These unilateral, coordinated steps, announced a year before the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, established the United States and China as leaders on this issue and created valuable momentum going into multilateral negotiations. President Obama personally called Modi several times to bring him into a deal,

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