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If president wants to prove it, he must join in climate summit
By Martin Schram
Published: November 1, 2021, 6:01am
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As global leaders gather in Glasgow, desperately seeking to save our overheating planet from this cataclysmic cycle of worst-ever storms and droughts, floods and famines, wildfires and weather-hells, the leader whose voice will likely dominate the 26th United Nations climate change conference will probably be the one who told the world he isn’t coming.
China’s Xi Jinping has been busy at finding other ways of making news.
This summer and fall, China’s president has been militarily and diplomatically ratcheting up tensions in Taiwan, sending fighter jets and bombers into Taiwan’s airspace and reminding its offshore island of democracy that the world considers them to be part of China.
And last week, on the eve of the U.N. summit, a clearly calculated new leak stunned the Pentagon’s experts half a world away. This summer, China tested a new generation of weaponry — a “hypersonic missile” that is intended to completely evade the United States’ nuclear missile defense systems. China’s new missile was capable of being launched into orbit around the Earth, far above the detection of America’s vaunted missile defense radar. Then, undetected, it can apparently be fired down upon a U.S. target. Perhaps carrying a Chinese nuclear bomb.
America’s top general left no doubt how perilous — and historically challenging — China’s hypersonic missile test was. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called it “very close” to being “a Sputnik moment.”
The four-star Army general made that candid observation in a unique interview format, Bloomberg Television’s “The David Rubenstein Show,” which bills itself as featuring “Peer-to-Peer Conversations” that the billionaire philanthropist and investor has with prominent newsmakers. Milley was referring, of course, to how Russia stunned America and the world in 1957 by launching the world’s first satellite — signaling that Russia was winning the space race. That was what prompted President John F. Kennedy to publicly proclaim, after taking office in 1961, that America would land a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
Of course, China’s president eagerly looks forward to the day when the world concludes that China deserves to be recognized as No. 1 in the world. And of course, he doesn’t mean the way all those leaders going to Glasgow already recognize that: China is by far the world’s No. 1 producer of greenhouse gas emissions that caused the warming of our planet and has produced today’s climate change crisis.
“In the past 10 years, China has emitted more greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, per year than any other country in the world,” a Council on Foreign Relations report noted in May. “It surpassed the United States as the top emitter in 2005, according to Climate Watch.” China produces more than a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and coal provides two-thirds of China’s energy consumption, the report said. And China’s large international aid program is planning to build “hundreds of coal-fired power plants in countries around the world.”
Time out. China’s president could find it in his and his country’s best interest — and also the entire world’s best interest — to check out the rest of what America’s Milley went on to tell his non-journalistic billionaire philanthropist interviewer.
“There’s no question that the greatest geo-strategic challenge to the United States is going to be China,” Milley said. “We’re seeing the rise of a country that’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. … We are living in an historical epic — the rise of China. I don’t know if it’s quite a Sputnik moment, but it’s very close to that. … It has all of our attention.”
What would now greatly benefit President Xi, given his global leadership ambitions — and the entire world, as we struggle to keep our planet a place that remains livable — is to rethink just what it means to be No. 1.
A world leader cannot lead when he is a no-show. An emerging economic and military superpower cannot achieve greatness without freeing his nation from the remnants of its Cold War way.
President Xi, let this be your “Man on the Moon Moment.” Lead the world by landing a man in Glasgow — you! Show up in Glasgow. Sign on as a co-leader and for once earn the world’s respect. Help lead by example. Let China truly help win our World War to defeat greenhouse gases — and save our planet.
Martin Schram is a Tribune News Service op-ed writer.
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