ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT Obama presses China on climate The Chinese government has been trying to clear the air.

BEIJING — The Chinese government has been trying to clear the air so that President Barack Obama and other world leaders arriving here this week won’t choke on the city’s thick smog.

Despite forcing cars off the roads and closing factories, the effort has faltered, as air pollution rose to “unhealthy” levels Friday and Saturday. But the Obama administration is hoping that this environmental stumble provides an opportunity to clear a different type of air while in China: the climate of fraught negotiations between the two countries over global warming.


People briefed on the administration’s strategy heading into Obama’s meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week say U.S. officials hope the bad air quality will prod the government to finally make a significant commitment to fight climate change.

Arguments about the health of the planet and the flooding of coastal cities don’t seem to have registered with China’s economy-focused government, so American officials have shifted their pitch to focus more on the ground pollution and thick haze that have caused expats to flee cities like Beijing and investors to grow wary.

Secretary of State John Kerry slipped the argument into his address Saturday to American business leaders in Beijing for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Obama arrived Monday to participate in the summit and will then hold meetings with his Chinese counterpart on Tuesday and Wednesday.

“This is a win-win-win-win-win,” Kerry said of the drive to use cleaner energy sources. “You gain in security, you gain in energy independence, energy capacity. You gain in health, where you have air that’s cleaner. In Beijing that is an issue. You have air that’s cleaner, and you don’t have kids that are hospitalized because of asthma.”

A potential deal would have both the U.S. and China commit by the first quarter of 2015 to specific targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that would take effect in the years after 2020 as part of a U.N.-led process. Commitments from the two superpowers could spur other countries to get off the sidelines and make their own pledges ahead of a major climate conference set to take place in Paris next year and a ground-laying meeting being held next month in Lima, Peru.

To further this goal, Obama counselor John Podesta has emerged, quietly, as the administration’s point man on the issue with China. He has held sensitive consultations with Chinese officials, popping up recently in some unusual venues to press climate change commitments.

When Kerry sat down in his hometown of Boston last month for talks with a top Chinese official, Podesta was on hand. Days later, Podesta traveled to Beijing for a conference devoted to Afghanistan, but the White House counselor also arranged a face-to-face meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli to work through climate-related issues to be discussed at this week’s Obama-Xi summit.

Still, it’s not clear that his efforts will pay off. White House officials said Friday that, while deals have already been struck with the Chinese on other initiatives to be announced during Obama’s visit, no agreements had yet been reached on climate change.

At the same time, the administration has given the issue a lower public profile in order not to raise expectations that won’t be met and to avoid startling top Chinese officials who may still be mulling how to respond to the American overtures. China hands also warn that an announcement on climate change during the president’s visit would play well for Obama but might not be desired by the Chinese, who for political reasons wouldn’t want the move to be seen as a result of American pressure.

Which is one of the reasons that U.S. officials think focusing on China’s smog problem presents a good opening: This way the issue is tied to what’s important for China, for its own domestic needs, and not just seen as an American power play.

Already, the pollution here has sparked popular unrest that has clearly spooked Chinese leaders. Earlier this year, many Beijing residents donned masks or stayed indoors as the air quality repeated exceeded the top, “hazardous” international air pollution standard. The brownish haze became so intense that Chinese citizens began taking to social media and criticizing the government.

“I think the Chinese attitude has begun to change dramatically about this,” said former Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg. “They’re beginning to understand the U.S., that their economic future depends on making a pivot away from pollution-driven industrial growth.”

Former U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman put it more bluntly. “They’re petrified because now it’s become a political issue,” he said, noting that the problem doesn’t just hurt public health but also economic investment in the country.

That fear is what the Obama administration is now looking to leverage.

“Senior Chinese officials get that solving air pollution in the right way also helps to solve their climate pollution,” said Jake Schmidt of the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council. “Clearly pointing to the domestic benefits of climate change action is a message that I’m sure the U.S. is making with their Chinese counterparts. There is a receptive audience in China at this point, which is why China’s CO 2 peaking in 2025 is gaining traction.”

When talks at the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009 fell apart, China received much of the blame. However, many of the Chinese officials involved in that episode have now retired and been replaced by new figures, some of whom seem more flexible on climate issues.

Some China experts, though, say the U.S. hasn’t yet made the sale on connecting the fights against pollution and global warming.

“Chinese leaders are worried about pollution but much less about climate change, and the U.S. is worried more about climate change than about pollution in China,” said Minxin Pei of Claremont McKenna College.

Even so, U.S. efforts to push China in that direction are seen as key to reaching the broader goals of the United Nations process, because countries need to announce their nationally determined commitments to greenhouse gas reductions early next year. Both China and the United States have said they’ll meet that timeline.

“People are going to be looking to their meeting as a signal that the president, post midterms, is going to continue pushing climate change as an important part of their bilateral relationship,” said Pete Ogden, a former White House climate aide who now works at the Center for American Progress. “If you’re able to keep climate change on the highest level of bilateral discussion, then you’re really sending a signal that both countries are committed to this process.”

Those tracking the issue say they expect the U.S. to encourage China to put forward an aggressive target to match the ambition of the one the United States is developing.

While the United States and China have often been at odds over who should be responsible for the cost of tackling climate change, the two countries have improved their relationship on the issue in recent years and have delivered some results. Notably, China and the U.S. agreed last year to work toward phasing down the consumption and production of hydrofluorocarbons, potent greenhouse gases used in air conditioners and refrigerators.

At the U.N. in September, Obama seemed to be hinting at progress on the climate issue with China.

“As the two largest economies and emitters in the world, we have a special responsibility to lead. That’s what big nations have to do,” Obama declared emphatically, in an improvised addition to his speech moments after a previously unannounced meeting with a top Chinese official.

But the United States faces its own challenges in acting on climate change. The Obama administration has yet to say publicly what kind of commitment the U.S. will make in slowing greenhouse gases or how that commitment will be enforced when its timeline would extend long after Obama’s term.

And even before the president leaves office, he has to contend with Republican midterm victories that likely will translate into more legislative pressure against executive actions he has taken on the environment and further plans for reining in emissions from cars, power plants and other sources. The lawmaker expected to take over as Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, ran on a platform attacking Obama over many of his climate moves, which McConnell branded part of a “war on coal.”

“The Republicans are against moving on climate change and the Chinese understand this,” Pei said.

However, Steinberg said he believes the GOP won’t be able to block or unwind U.S. climate actions through budget riders or similar measures, in part because Obama views climate as a key part of his legacy to be cemented in his final two years in office.

“They’ll try, but I just don’t think they’ll have enough leverage,” said the former State Department official, now dean of Syracuse’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. “The president can’t fight on everything, but I’m convinced on this he really cares and he will fight.”

Andrew Restuccia and Elana Schor contributed reporting from Washington.