By Dan Drollette Jr, January 20, 2017
As Donald Trump is sworn in to take the office of President of the United States, The Guardian newspaper asked a variety of experts on climate what advice they would give him, in the space of two or three sentences. Interestingly, they all seemed to tie fighting climate change to backing the United States in technology—green technology, that is.
“Unleashing US innovation on the trillion-dollar clean technology market will create good US jobs, stimulate its economy, maintain the US’s political leadership around the globe and, not least, make the world a safer place by tackling climate change, the experts told the Guardian.”
And another way to look at it is that reversing US efforts to fight climate change and instead champion fossil fuel will only “make China great again.”
The last comment is more than just rhetoric, as Li Shuo, a policy adviser at Greenpeace East Asia, told Bloomberg: “The US political situation provides an external driver for China to go forward from being a reluctant leader to climate hero.” As if underscoring that point, Chinese President Xi Jinping was at the annual World Economic Forum meeting this week, where he said that China has suspended 101 coal-power projects across 11 provinces as it moves toward cutting carbon dioxide emissions. China already leads in renewable energy investment, spending almost $88 billion in 2016, or one-third more than the United States, said Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
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