US, China unveil surprise deal to cooperate more on climate crisis

A surprise deal between China and the United States, the world’s two biggest greenhouse gas emitters, has boosted the COP26 U.N. climate summit as it enters two final days of tough bargaining to try to stop global warming becoming catastrophic.

Britain’s conference president, Alok Sharma, told delegations that the latest draft conclusions that he had seen showed “significant” progress, but that “we are not there yet”.

In particular, he called for more effort on “climate finance” - the perennially vexed question of how much the rich countries whose development caused most global warming should pay the poorer ones who will bear most of its consequences.

Developing nations want tougher rules from 2025 onwards, after rich countries failed to meet a 2009 pledge to provide $100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020 to help them curb emissions and cope with the effects of rising temperatures. Campaigners say that sum is anyway woefully inadequate.

A first draft published on Wednesday merely “urges’’ developed countries to “urgently scale up” aid to help poorer ones adapt to climate change, and calls for more funding through grants rather than loans, which add to debt burdens.

China, the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gases, has gradually accepted more responsibility for its emissions from an economy that has grown beyond measure in the last two decades. U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua unveiled a joint declaration late on Wednesday in which China, the biggest producer and user of coal, promised to accelerate its transition from the dirtiest fossil fuel.
GLASGOW, Nov 11 (Reuters)