Anthony Albanese stuck in the middle of a Xi Jinping-Donald Trump climate stoush at the UN
The Chinese President on Thursday (AEST) moved quickly to set up a high-stakes diplomatic counter offensive over climate change, designed to divide allies and partners of the US.
Anthony Albanese has been dragged into a global climate change fight between the world’s two biggest polluting nations, after Xi Jinping and Donald Trump clashed over emission reductions and renewables amid a deepening strategic and military contest between the superpowers.
Following the US President’s UN General Assembly address on Wednesday attacking green energy and climate change, the Chinese President on Thursday (AEST) moved quickly to set up a high-stakes diplomatic counteroffensive designed to divide allies and partners of the US.
Mr Xi – who will meet with Mr Trump on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in South Korea in late October – declared that China would reduce emissions up to 10 per cent on peak levels by 2035 and lift the share of non-fossil fuels in power consumption to more than 30 per cent.
In addition, he would expand the installed capacity of wind and solar power to more than six times their 2020 levels, scale up China’s total forest stock volume to 24 billion cubic metres and make new energy vehicles “mainstream”.
Mr Albanese, who is juggling complex diplomatic, economic and security relationships with Beijing and Washington, said it was “good that there is progress being made (by China)” but he made clear Australia was expecting greater ambition from Mr Xi, adding “we, of course, would like there to be more”.
“We would like to see new coal-fired power plants not open. But it is a step forward,” Mr Albanese told the Climate Forward conference hosted by The New York Times. “Part of what President Xi announced as well – on electric vehicles – that’s been a revolution frankly in a relatively short period of time. And they are becoming very dominant in that market.”
Mr Albanese met briefly and took a selfie with the US President at a welcome reception at the Lotte New York Palace hotel on Wednesday (AEST) after locking in a visit to the White House on October 20 – nine months after Mr Trump took office.
“We had a very warm and engaging chat. I tend not to broadcast private discussions, but it was very warm. And we look forward to a further discussion in a few weeks’ time,” Mr Albanese said.
The Prime Minister – who flies to London to meet with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer late on Thursday – has carefully sidestepped criticism of the US President’s fiery address to the General Assembly, including his attack on climate change and renewables, arguing that Mr Trump was entitled to put forward his views.
Pressed on whether he would lift defence spending given that Mr Trump’s administration is demanding Australia lift its commitment to 3.5 per cent of GDP amid a Pentagon review of the AUKUS agreement, Mr Albanese said “we’ll continue to monitor and examine what capability Australia needs … We have increased our spending now by around about $70bn compared with what we inherited.”
Appearing virtually at the UN just over 24 hours after Mr Trump branded climate change the “greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”, Mr Xi pushed back on resistance to the clean energy transition.
He also demanded developed nations provide greater financial and technological support to the developing word.
“While some country is acting against it, the international community should stay focused on the right direction,” he said.
“Global climate governance is entering a key stage.”
Mr Xi said in the course of the global green energy transition, “fairness and equity should be upheld and the right to development of developing countries fully respected”.
This meant honouring the “principle of common but differentiated responsibilities whereby developed countries should take the lead in fulfilling emission-reduction obligations and provide more financial and technological support to developing countries”.
By contrast, Mr Trump slammed climate change in his UN address as a vehicle to “redistribute manufacturing and industrial activity from developed countries … to polluting countries that are making a fortune”.
The Chinese Communist Party intervention on climate change, which is unlikely to see the Asian economic giant tangibly cut emissions or shut out the fossil fuels it relies on, came as California Governor Gavin Newsom eviscerated Mr Trump over his speech.
The leading Democratic 2028 presidential contender, who has launched a talk-show blitz this week, on Thursday (AEST) accused Mr Trump of being a “fraud” and told The New York Times’ Climate Forward summit that the Republican billionaire’s address had been an “embarrassment and abomination”.
Mr Newsom said Mr Trump’s abandonment of wind and solar energy would directly benefit China, quipping that Mr Xi would “give Trump a big bear hug”.
After making Australia’s clean energy transition and climate change risks a dominant feature of his week in New York, Mr Albanese used his own national statement at the UN to defend the institution and warned other nations not to abandon multilateralism.
“If we allow any nation to imagine itself outside the rules, or above them, then the sovereignty of every nation is eroded,” he said.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva also appeared to take aim at the US for going its own way on climate change, attacking denialism and warning that breaking away from the multilateral system would make it harder to reduce global emissions.
“Walls at borders will not stop droughts or storms. Nature does not bow down to bombs or warships. No country stands above another,” he said.
With Australia still hoping to secure its bid to host next year’s COP31 meeting, it emerged that Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen had met with Turkey’s first lady, Emine Erdogan, at an event on the upper east side of New York.
Her position is seen as central to whether not Turkey will withdraw its rival bid for COP hosting rights in 2026, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continuing to lobby for the climate summit at the UN on Wednesday.
“I would like to underline particularly that our water efficiency campaign and the zero waste initiative – led under the auspices of my spouse, Emine Erdogan, and elevated to the global level – both of these play a critical role in our fight against climate change,” he said. “And we hope to crown all these efforts by hosting the 31st COP Conference of the Parties in 2026.”
Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, praised China for its 2035 emissions-reduction targets as a “clear signal the future global economy will run on clean energy”.
Others were more critical of the Chinese target, with the former vice-president for policy and strategic initiatives at the UN Foundation, Kaysie Brown, saying Beijing risked “undermining its claim to uphold multilateralism and its clean economy leadership”.
Now the associate director for climate diplomacy and geopolitics at independent climate change think tank E3G, she said China’s 2035 target of 7-10 per cent “falls critically short of what’s needed” and was “neither aligned with China’s economic decarbonisation potential nor its own 2060 carbon neutrality goal”.
Andreas Sieber, the associate director of policy and campaigns at 350.org, said China’s new target was both “underwhelming and transformative”.
“Reducing emissions by 7-10 per cent by 2035 from peak levels falls short of what the world needs, yet it anchors the world’s largest emitter on a path where clean tech defines economic leadership.”
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