If the US pulls out of climate action, is there room for China or another country to fill the leadership void? Or without the US, does climate multilateralism fall apart entirely?
This episode is a direct response to my recent monologue episode, "How Carbon Removal Loses: The End of "Pre-Compliance"", which walked through the political risks to climate and carbon removal policy in a world where the US pulls back. I looked at Canada, the EU, its various member states, and Japan as possible safe havens. One country I left out was China. So I invited Sarah Godek back on as my "sinologist on call" to help set the record straight.
Sarah Godek is a returning guest and very knowledgeable about China. Our previous episode—a conversation about realism and liberalism in geopolitics, born out of a piece she co-wrote with Grant Faber on carbon security—is linked in the resources section and is a useful first step before diving into this one.
In this episode, Sarah walks me through China's energy security priorities, the difficult role coal plays in Chinese strategy, Tencent's CarbonX Prize, the absence of a clear institutional home for carbon removal inside the Chinese government, and the much harder question of whether climate multilateralism can survive without American leadership.
Listen in to hear more about what the "intangible third thing" of world leadership actually is (Sarah argues it's capability — the ability to make other actors stop) and why the war in Iran is a very different status hit for the US than the war in Iraq was; why a peaceful reunification with Taiwan is still the preferred outcome in Beijing, and what that says about the value of legitimacy; how China's environmentalist movement today more closely resembles the US in the 1960s, and how the principle that "green mountains are gold mountains" shapes Chinese carbon removal policy (heavy on sinks and reforestation, light on engineered CDR); what the 15th Five-Year Plan might or might not change; why China frames historical emissions as a Western problem—"if we didn't break it, why must we buy it?"—and what that means for whether China will ever take the mantle on CDR specifically; and Sarah's closing framing... it isn't that the US leaves a gaping hole the world flounders in. It's that the world will continue on without us, and the risk isn't punishment for not being at the table—it's being on the menu.
This Episode's Sponsors
Philip Lee LLP: legal resources for carbon removal buyers and suppliers
Listen to the RCC episode with Ryan Covington from Philip Lee LLP about project finance
Listen to the RCC episode with Lev Gantly about the history and current status of CORSIA
Rainbow: a developer-centric carbon removal registry
"Why carbon markets need field engineers, not just scientists" on Rainbow
"What scientists actually do in carbon removal" on rosskenyon.com
Resources
Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change
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338: Carbon Security & the Geopolitics of Carbon Removal—w/ Sarah Godek
"Carbon security and the geopolitics of carbon removal" by Sarah Godek & Grant Faber
391: How Carbon Removal Loses: The End of "Pre-Compliance"
Tencent's CarbonX Program
China's 15th Five-Year Plan and carbon—"Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality China's Plans and Solutions"
Reversing Climate Change