Malloy Touts Connecticut’s Progress on Global Warming Issues at US-China Summit

Cities, states, and provinces from the world’s biggest superpowers – and by far the world’s biggest carbon emitters – just pledged to reduce their carbon emissions at a summit in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

Chinese officials announced the landmark formation of the new “Alliance of Peaking Pioneer Cities” (APPC). California will offer up its goal of cutting emissions 80 to 90 percent below 1990 levels by midcentury, and Seattle will vow to become carbon-neutral by that same year.

The US-China Climate-Smart/Low-Carbon Cities Summit is the first in a planned series of meetings following a November 2014 agreement between US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping to work together to cut carbon emissions.

In addition, the leaders of 11 Chinese cities, including Beijing, announced plans to reach their emissions peak earlier than the national target of 2030.

According to the White House, Beijing and Guangzhou will seek to peak their carbon dioxide emissions by the end of 2020, ten years earlier than the national goal. LA has also created memorandums of understanding with Beijing and Shenzhen that will allow the cities to share information on smart transportation and green buildings, with a target of reducing pollution at city ports.

A statement from the White House said that the Summit “shows the determination of both countries to continually deepen and strengthen cooperation on climate change and to engage city, state, municipal, private-sector, and NGO partners in this critical effort”.

The people who gathered here are day-to-day implementers at different levels and in various areas, such as governors, mayors, business leaders and innovators, who seek a path to a sustainable future and “have the will to make it happen”, he said. The local-level systems may could also influence each other, one study pointed out previous year, as they all are developing in the absence of a national cap-and-trade program. Addressing a solar power summit in Anaheim, Biden offered a prediction that viewers would hear more skepticism about climate change from the pack of GOP candidates participating in the debate. But the grants are intended to help spur specific aspects of the industry that the Obama administration would like to get more attention, including more access to solar energy in rural and low-income neighborhoods and for more efforts to reduce the cost of solar energy.

Taking the stage in Los Angeles, Biden cast himself as having been ahead of the curve on climate, citing a bill he introduced in 1986. The meeting is the first of its kind at the provincial and city level between the two countries. These targets allow each individual government to tailor emission reduction plans to fit regional needs.

“The Summit represents a key opportunity to galvanize climate action before December’s United Nations climate conference in Paris”, U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern said in a press release.

China doesn’t “have a polarized situation when it comes to this issue”, he said.

President Obama’s support for the local government leaders summit is seen as a tacit admission that the campaign to reduce carbon emission is most effective if cities and states are given an active role.

Xi will visit Seattle on September 22 before arriving in Washington, D.C., to meet with Obama.