China envoy defends emissions, criticizes US under Trump

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — China is at a “special development stage” that warrants its current status as the world's biggest emitter of climate-damaging fossil fuel pollution, the nation's senior climate negotiator said Tuesday.

Xie Zhenhua, a special climate envoy for China, spoke to reporters at the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

As a major climate polluter and as the world's second-biggest economy, China has been much talked about, but little seen, at the summit. Chinese President Xi Jinping — who is not known to have left the country during the pandemic — has not joined the more than 100 other world leaders at the event, addressing observers and delegates in a written message Monday instead.

Xie, who played a pivotal role in negotiations that achieved the 2015 Paris climate accord, underscored China's longstanding position that the United States and other developed nations should be the ones acting faster to cut climate-damaging emissions, not China.

China is already "making our biggest possible effort to address climate change,” Xie said, saying China was unable to start reining in its reliance on coal-fired power plants any quicker than it already was.

“So regarding the fact that China is the current largest emitter, it’s because China is at a special development stage,” Xie said. The nation will be able to speed up its emission cuts later, he said.

“We do not only make promises, we honor our promises with real action,” he said.

China, which is heavily dependent on coal-fired power, pledged last year to start reining in its fossil fuel emissions later in this decade and to become carbon neutral by 2060.

Climate negotiators welcomed Xi's announcements then, but its 2060 date is a decade later than many other countries' target, and Xi has resisted...