China announces new climate goal to cut emissions

China, the world’s largest carbon-polluting nation, has announced a new climate fighting goal to cut emissions by 7% to 10% by 2035.

In a video address to the United Nations high-level climate summit on Wednesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping told his fellow leaders that the world’s second-largest economy, which has long seen its carbon pollution soar, will finally reduce the emissions of the gases that cause global warming and extreme weather.

It came as more than 100 world leaders gathered to talk of increased urgency and the need for stronger efforts to curb the spewing of heat-trapping gases.

With major international climate negotiations in Brazil six and a half weeks away, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres convened a special leaders summit on Wednesday during the General Assembly to focus on specific plans to curb emissions from coal, oil and natural gas.

Mr Xi pledged that China would increase its wind and solar power sixfold from 2020 levels, make pollution-free vehicles mainstream and “basically establish a climate adaptive society”.

Europe then followed with a less detailed and not quite official new climate change fighting plan.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said their infrastructure and investment in renewable energy and the price of carbon had all increased, and their emissions are down nearly 40% since 1940.

Last week, member states agreed that their nationally determined contribution would range between 66% and 72%, and that they would formally submit their plan before the November negotiations, she said.

Mr Xi and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, on Wednesday afternoon, took thinly veiled swipes at US President Donald Trump’s attacks on renewable energy and the concept of climate change a day earlier.

China’s leader said: “While some countries are acting against it, the international community should stay focused on the right direction.”

Brazil’s Mr Lula, who is hosting the upcoming climate conference, said: “No one is safe from the effect of climate change. Walls at borders will not stop droughts or storms.

“Nature does not bow down to bombs or warships. No country stands above another.”

“All of us may lose because denialism may actually win,” he concluded.

Mr Guterres said: “The science demands action. The law commands it. The economics compel it. And people are calling for it.”