Can China be trusted on climate change?
Xi Jinping was widely praised on Tuesday after he told the United Nations General Assembly via videolink that China would ‘achieve carbon neutrality before 2060’. Environmental activists, academics and government leaders in the West hailed the move as a big deal, a significant step toward addressing climate change. The New York Times couldn’t resist framing this story as a ‘pointed message to the US’ which under Trump has increasingly diverged from the growing scientific and political consensus on climate change. President Trump, famously, initiated the process of withdrawing the country from the 2015 Paris Climate Accords.
