John Kerry on Climate: ‘We Are Talking to China About Talking’

EXCERPT:

KERRY: "We are talking with China about talking and we need, obviously, to have China at the table in order to be able to resolve this challenge. China is about 28 to 30 percent of the emissions. We worked with China very effectively in 2013, '14, '15, to get the Paris agreement, and I hope, and President Biden hopes that we will be able to work with China. And as the President has said, the climate issue is a freestanding issue. It's not for trade against the other critical differences that we have with China right now. Everybody's familiar with them, in the economy, economic issues, certain issues of rights and other issues. But those have got to be channeled separately. Climate is about the survival of the planet. Climate is about health and security and reducing disease and not sending our kids to the hospital in the summer time with environmentally induced asthma. We spend billions of dollars to deal with that. So, common sense is going to try to be applied to come up with market-based solutions with some incentives from the government in order to try to encourage behavior."