The United States, China, and Climate Change: An Analysis of the US-China Climate Pact and its Implications for International Climate Negotiations

Climate change increasingly is becoming a major issue for the international community. It is contributing to rising global temperatures, rising sea levels, drought, natural disaster intensification, and ecological damage, amongst other things. A scientific consensus has emerged over recent years that implicates greenhouse gases, chief amongst them carbon dioxide, for causing global warming. Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that the greenhouse gas effect has been caused in large part by the spike of human emissions since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. To reverse the problem, the density of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere, especially carbon dioxide, has to be reduced. Doing so necessitates a combined approach of reducing emissions at present and in the future, and removing greenhouse gases currently present in Earth’s atmosphere