Guest Host Iza Ding with Deborah Seligsohn: Inside COP30 in Belem, Brazil, and China's Climate Leadership

Summary

---

Sinica Podcast – Inside COP30 in Belem, Brazil, and China’s Climate Leadership

Date: December 10, 2025
Host: Guest Host Iza Ding (for Kaiser Kuo)
Guest: Dr. Deborah Seligson, Associate Professor of Political Science, Villanova University; former Science and Environment Counselor, US Embassy in Beijing

---

Episode Overview

This episode offers a unique, inside perspective on COP30, the 2025 UN Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil, and critically examines China’s evolving role in global climate governance. Guest host Iza Ding speaks with Dr. Deborah Seligson, a seasoned climate policy expert and longtime observer of both Chinese and international environmental politics. Their conversation is divided into three parts: onsite impressions and negotiations at COP30, a deep dive into a historic moment in China's air pollution governance (the US Embassy air monitor in Beijing), and a reflective discussion on the summit’s outcomes and what they mean for global leadership in climate action.

---

1. Impressions of COP30 in Belém, Brazil

[04:01]

Local Involvement and COP Structure

• Dr. Seligson praises the integration of local Brazilian communities into the conference, a notable contrast with recent COPs:

  “There’s a lot more interaction between local people and people participating at the COP... The Green Zone is full of local people looking at exhibits on renewable energy, low carbon options… There’s a people’s COP downtown, there’s just a lot more happening.” – Seligson [04:12]

• The usual split between the closed ‘Blue Zone’ and public ‘Green Zone’ was bridged, encouraging cross-fertilization of ideas and activism.

Logistics and Organization

• Despite negative portrayals (e.g., in the New York Times’ The Daily), Ding and Seligson agree the event was "well run" given its scale (~100,000 attendees).

  “I would say they've done an awfully good job on logistics... At the big pre meeting in Bonn, it took them two days to come up with an agenda. I think this time it was about 15 minutes, which is a sign of just incredible parliamentary and bureaucratic skill...” – Seligson [08:54]

Brazilian Leadership

• The Brazilian presidency made efforts to keep negotiations on schedule and include wider voices, setting a positive tone for inclusivity.

---

2. China’s Presence and Perceptions at COP30

China’s Dual Identity

[09:06]

• Ding observes the contrast: The US presence was barely visible, while China was prominent but “not the villain” (as is often cast in Western media).
• Seligson notes:

  “What’s different between what China does and what the US formerly could do... is being one of the creative leaders and helping to figure out how to get to language that actually gets you to a negotiated conclusion. The Chinese have made it very clear they don’t want to be leaders in that way in the negotiation.” – Seligson [16:52]

Academic and NGO Collaboration

[09:50]

• Seligson’s event at the China Pavilion, hosted by a Tsinghua-led international university coalition, highlighted ongoing US-China climate cooperation, despite geopolitical tensions:

  “We talked about how there are a bunch of new barriers out there. We think there are things that both countries could do to make cooperation easier, but we still have lots of examples of actual cooperation moving forward…” [09:50]

Media Narratives vs. Ground Truth

[12:22]

• Ding and Seligson discuss a NYT episode framing China as dominating via a “flood of green tech.”

  “The problem with the word glut is it suggests there's too much of it out there. The reality is we need to decarbonize the world. … There's no glut at all.” – Seligson [35:20]

• Seligson also critiques Western focus on China’s coal while ignoring its massive advances in solar, wind, and electrification:

  “The over focus on the number of Chinese coal fired power plants was missing the larger picture, that solar and wind... were going to overtake that.” [13:17]

---

3. Negotiations and Leadership Dynamics

US and China: Contrasting Roles

[15:02]

• The US’s absence this year was “very visible,” but Seligson observes some at COP felt it was better than discordant US participation:

  “People around us have been saying they would rather not have a US government delegation than a US government delegation bent on creating havoc.” [15:02]

• China: Present but low-key. Leadership manifests more through technology, practical demonstration, and collaborations with developing nations than through diplomatic negotiation or “creative” language-shaping in treaties.

  “They want to be leaders in terms of technology... But they don't feel comfortable being a leader in this kind of international negotiation space.” [16:52]

Why China Avoids Negotiation Leadership

[21:25]

• Seligson attributes this to China’s desire to remain a “friend” to the Group of 77 and its discomfort with being targeted for criticism.

  “When you put your neck out, some people aren’t going to like it. And I think the Chinese really value being a friend to the Entire Group of 77 nations, the developing nations.” [21:25]

• Anecdote: China rarely receives the "Fossil of the Day" award (for obstructionist negotiation) because “they are very careful about what they say.” [22:55]

Negotiation Language and Tactics

[25:18]

• Ding and Seligson describe the minutiae and cultural nuances of COP negotiations (e.g., “urge” vs. “encourage”, “coordination” vs. “workshops”). They highlight the performance of institutionalized ‘good guy’ language by the EU and the difficulty for developing countries in navigating cumbersome metrics for climate finance access.

Finance Fights

• The decades-running tension between developed countries (seeking strict accountability) and developing countries (desiring flexibility and less red tape) over climate finance.
• Seligson: “A fight for decades—how much money is actually going to get delivered, and how many strings are going to be attached.” [27:34]

---

4. Tech, Economy, and the “Glut” Narrative

Chinese EVs and Automation

[33:35]

• BYD’s prominence in Brazil exemplifies China’s global reach in green tech; affordable EVs tailored to local needs have made an impact:

  “BYD has a high quality electric vehicle for about US$10,000. So it's a much more appealing option for folks in a developing country like Brazil.” [33:35]

• Much of China’s competitive edge comes not just from subsidies, but heavy** automation and supply chain sophistication**:

  “Chinese domestic production is incredibly automated... The vast majority of the workers were at the End of the assembly line, doing sort of final assembly, popping in windshields and that kind of thing, and doing quality assurance. … These were clean, comfortable jobs that were very safe.” [36:43]

• Seligson notes a key structural advantage: China’s extensive technical training for factory automation that the US lacks. [38:27]

“Glut” and Overcapacity

• Seligson rebuffs “glut shaming” (an emerging Sinica in-joke) as misleading:

  “We need so much more wind, solar and electric vehicles than we’re currently producing… There’s no glut at all.” [35:20]

---

5. Rewriting the “US Embassy Air Monitor” Story

[41:24]

• Seligson, responsible for the installation, debunks the myth that US Embassy data “proved” Chinese government air data was wrong:

  “The data collected by the Ministry of the Environment was accurate. The problem was what they supplied to the public was a 24 hour average rather than real time data. … Our original idea is if we got one for the embassy and started publishing the data, the schools would learn from that and they would buy their own.” [41:24]

• Real-time data sharing (enabled by Twitter) became transformative for the public and was later emulated by Chinese officials (first locally, then nationally), but key policy moves (e.g., tough new regulations on power plants) predated the monitor and were domestically driven.

• Key Quote:

  “People think, ‘Oh, it was these international people telling China that they had an air pollution problem.’ No, China knew it had an air pollution problem. It also had lots of experts who knew all the details... This was a Chinese-driven effort.” [55:13]

---

6. Outcomes and Reflections on Leadership After COP30

Final Agreement, Disappointments, and Process

[101:46]

• The closing plenary was theatrical—with Latin American countries decrying the presidency, Russia dramatizing in Spanish, and disagreements over terms like 'gender'. Seligson affirms such drama is typical, though perhaps less so in rare “breakthrough” years like Paris.
• The much-anticipated Brazilian concept of "mutirao" (collective effort) structured the final agreement, aiming for consensus despite clear disappointments.

Assessment of Progress

[107:20]

• Despite disappointment over lack of bold language (“transitioning away from fossil fuels”) and adaptation finance, Seligson is optimistic:

  "At the time of the Paris agreement, the expectation was that business as usual would lead to 4°C increase... and now we’re down to somewhere between 2.3 and 2.5°C ...The work is happening... This was the COP that might have been a complete failure of the UN process. Without the US there, you could have had just kind of a global rebellion... and that didn't happen.” [107:20]

• Ding and Seligson stress the value of the process itself as a bulwark against climate regression, even when substances falls short.

---

7. China’s Current and Future Leadership Trajectory

Policy vs. Negotiation Leadership

[115:47]

• China wants to lead by technological and implementation example (e.g. green urbanization, grassland restoration, solar, EVs), not by sticking its neck out in the diplomatic arena.

  “The kind of leadership the Chinese were interested in asserting was leadership on the technology side... not at all interested in leadership in the negotiation space.” [115:47]

• China’s conservative NDC targets are “modest,” as is typical; Seligson notes, “They like to exceed their targets and so they probably will. The challenge is people want them to put in a tough enough target that other countries feel pressured to also speak up with more ambition.” [119:13]

Why China Does Not “Over-Pledge”

• Ding highlights that China prefers to under-promise and over-deliver, noting this is “actually the more ethical approach” but potentially lowers global ambition if replicated elsewhere. [120:55]

Looking Forward

• Seligson foresees China’s leadership style and negotiation posture evolving, albeit always “lagging a little behind where they really are” in terms of global expectations and capabilities. [123:56]

---

8. Cultural and Social Realities at COP30

• Cultural presence: National pavilions, indigenous groups, and even corporate sponsors (like BYD and their EVs/cars) played a big part in COP’s social tapestry.
• The “Fossil of the Day” ceremony provided comic relief and civil society participation:

  “There’s a guy in a dinosaur blow up outfit dancing around and there's music playing...” [29:50]

• Ding and Seligson wax poetic about Brazilian ice cream and the importance of informal networking and cultural exchange in making progress possible.

---

9. The Value—and Critique—of COPs

[95:21]

• Critique: Are COPs themselves climate hypocrites due to their emissions? Seligson is unapologetic:

  "I don't know how you solve problems without getting people together. I've… been enriched by spending time in other countries and cultures. … I want to solve the problem. I believe technology will be part of the answer. But I don't want us to become isolated from each other." [97:54]

• Ding notes the indispensable value of in-person dialogue, protest, and observation.

---

10. Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On China’s negotiation role:
  “They want to be seen as the world leaders in renewable energy… They don't want to be given the task of coming up with creative new language for the treaties.” – Seligson [20:05]

• On the ‘glut’ narrative:
  “There’s no glut at all. … We need to decarbonize the world.” – Seligson [35:20]

• On soft power and credibility:
  “I think what’s more important for the Chinese is not so much soft power, but credibility. How reliable are you? Can people trust you and are you supportive?” – Seligson [73:01]

• On evolution of Chinese climate governance:
  “You had a lot of people in China advocating for air pollution control... But the big change actually happened in 2003, which is seven years before the air apocalypse and four years before the US air pollution monitor, when the Chinese brought in new standards for power plants...” – Seligson [53:25]

• On in-person diplomacy:
  “I don't know how you solve problems without getting people together… I don't think that will make any of us better off.” – Seligson [97:46]

---

11. Looking Ahead: COP31 and Evolving Leadership

• Next year’s COP will experiment with a split presidency-hosting model: Turkey will host, Australia will preside.

  “It’s going to be very interesting… Australia and Turkey trying to work together may be super interesting.” – Seligson [88:03]

• Seligson expects further challenges to global climate governance, but ultimately sees hope in relentless technological progress and durable (if slow) multilateral action.

---

Key Timestamps

• [04:01] – First reflections on COP30, local involvement
• [09:50] – China Pavilion, US-China cooperation event
• [15:02] – Absence of US government and implications
• [16:52] – China’s avoidance of diplomatic leadership
• [35:20] – The “glut” narrative in green tech
• [41:24] – The real story behind Beijing’s US Embassy air monitor
• [101:46] – Reflections on final plenary, drama, and consensus
• [115:47] – China’s leadership posture at COP30
• [119:13] – Assessment of China’s new NDC

---

This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the evolving geopolitics of climate change, China’s complex approach to leadership, the gritty reality of global climate negotiations, and the sometimes comic, sometimes poignant, humanity in the battle for our planet’s future.

---

Transcript

[Isa Ding]

What can 160 years of experience teach you about the future?

[Deborah Seligson]

When it comes to protecting what matters.

[Isa Ding]

Pacific Life provides life insurance, retirement income, and employee benefits for people and businesses building a more confident tomorrow. Strategies rooted in strength and backed by experience.

[Deborah Seligson]

Ask a financial professional how Pacific Life.

[Isa Ding]

Can help you today. Pacific Life Insurance Co. Omaha, Nebraska and.

[Deborah Seligson]

In New York Pacific Life and Annuity.

[Kaiser Kuo]

Phoenix, Arizona Foreigners welcome to the Sineca Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China. In this program, we look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that will help us better understand what's happening in China's politics, foreign relations, economics and society. Join Senecai each week for in depth conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to how we think and talk about China. I am not Kaiser Kuo on Helium I'm Issa Ding, this week's guest host. I'm here with our guest today and my dear friend Dr. Deborah Seligson, who has been on this show many, many times and is one of Kaiser's favorite favorite guests. Dr. Zelakson is an Associate professor of Political Science at Villanova University and was previously a Science and Environment Counselor at the US Embassy in Beijing. If you subscribe to my [e-mail] or the Seneca substack, you might have met her through my essay from this past summer called Schopenhauer's East Asian Renaissance. What you're about to hear is an episode that has three parts. The first two were recorded this November in Belem, Brazil, where both Deb and I were attending COP 30, which is the 30th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. In this part, Deb shares with me her thoughts about this year's climate summit and China's role in it. You will also hear our discussion of a historical moment in China's environmental governance, which was in 2007 when the US embassy in Beijing installed an air pollution monitor on its roof and tweeted out air pollution data. The standard story is that this became China's silent spring moment and finally made the Chinese government take care of its air pollution problem. Well, it turned out that this was not the story, and we know it's not the story because Deb was actually the one that made the embassy do that. So she told me what actually happened here. The last part of this episode was done after the conclusion of COP 30. Deb and I discussed the collective decision that came out of the summit and talked more about China's leadership, or lack thereof, in the global effort to fight climate change. Before we start, let me tell you that Seneca is supported this year by the center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The Seneca Podcast will remain free, but if you work for an organization that believes in what Kaiser does, please consider lending your support. You can reach [e-mail] you can also support Kaiser's work by becoming a paid [e-mail] you'll enjoy, in addition to the podcast, the complete transcript of the show, as is from Kaiser and from some of your favorite China focused writers and commentators. I subscribe to it. I find it very helpful to my own thinking, so do consider doing that now. Let me take you to Belem, Brazil, in the cafeteria at this year's Climate Summit.

[Isa Ding]

So Deb, this is your 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th cop, 8th cop and what are your impressions so far?

[Deborah Seligson]

It's a really interesting cop. I mean, the Brazilians have really tried to bring in the community. There's a lot more interaction between local people and people participating at the COP.

Than we've seen in recent years.

The conference is divided between the Blue Zone, which is where you need a badge to get in, and it's very hard for observers because everybody wants to go, so we get a quota, and the Green Zone, which is open to the public. But in the last few years, the Green Zone's been virtually empty. This year the Green Zone is connected to the Blue Zone. There's a lot of interaction back and forth. The Green Zone is full of local people looking at exhibits on renewable energy, low carbon options, clean transportation, clean cooking fuels, et cetera. There's crafts, there's all kinds of things going on. There's a people's cop downtown, there's just a lot more happening. The Brazilian presidency is also trying to allow these different voices to be heard within the negotiations process, which has definitely not been true in recent years, and trying to push the COP to get its business done on time, which also I'm not sure has ever been done. Certainly not in the many years I've been going to cops, which while I've been to ada, the first one I went to was all the way back in 2007.

[Isa Ding]

Can you say a bit more about how Belem as a city or Brazil did this year compared to previous cops? Because the daily podcast by the New York Times did an episode on the COP and China and one of the things they said or implied was that is kind of a mess and the traffic is bad. The Roof is leaking. But honestly, I thought it was quite well run. I have frustrations about the lack of communication from the presidency in the past two days, but overall, I thought Belem did a great job. And the roof leaks. You know, the roof leaks in my Pittsburgh house when it rains. So I don't see the point of making a big deal out of the roof of a temporary structure leaking a little bit during a heavy storm. And while the streets are not empty because there's a huge convention taking place, I thought the traffic around the convention center is a lot better than going to the city from the o' Hare International Airport in Chicago. So as a seasoned COP attender, can you just compare Belem a bit with, for instance, Copenhagen, Paris, Azerbaijan?

[Deborah Seligson]

So you're right.

These are the kinds of problems that you hit anywhere when you try to run a conference for 100,000 people. It's really a huge logistics challenge. And I will say last summer, many people were telling me, oh, the organizational problems are insurmountable. And it seems like Brazil has basically surmounted almost all of them. I expected the conference venue to be hot because we're in the tropics. It was hot in Bali in 2007 as well. Well, you know.

The roof leaks. I felt some drops of rain during incredible storms. I didn't see rain pouring in or anything.

[Isa Ding]

Yeah, exactly.

[Deborah Seligson]

So I would say they've done an awfully good job on logistics. And I think the reality is with a conference this size, you are going to need temporary structures. Last year, there were sort of fumes from paint and solvents for the entire time, which I think was much more difficult to manage than a slightly warm and maybe slightly damp venue. I think the presidency has done an incredibly good job of managing the agenda. You know, at the. So COP is actually the big meeting, but they're really usually three or four during the year where the countries get together. And at the big pre meeting in June in Bonn, it took them two days to come up with an agenda. I think this time it was about 15 minutes, which is a sign of just incredible parliamentary and bureaucratic skill on the part of the COP president. So I was impressed in the way I was at Paris in 2015, at the management of the negotiations. A place like Paris, which is highly developed and happened to have an old airport to turn into a huge convention.

Center, gave it a lot of advantages.

But most places don't have that, and they're trying to move the COP from place to place. So overall, I would give this COP very high mark.

[Isa Ding]

So let's talk about China as a cop because the daily podcast did say a lot about China at the cop. And I have to say, you know, personally, it's a bit weird to be in a sense, space where you don't see a big presence of the United States and nobody seems to care, while it's also a bit weird to be in a space where China is not the complete villain. We've been hanging out around the China Pavilion a lot, partly because it's so centrally located. So tell us the event you did at the China Pavilion this morning.

[Deborah Seligson]

So we had an event hosted by a global coalition of universities that is spearheaded by Tsinghua University, the Chinese equivalent of mit, and they held an event on academic cooperation, basically. And I gave a talk in which I outlined the research that my Tsinghua colleague Hu Bin and I have done on the opportunities for US China cooperation in this era of heightened competition and geopolitical stress and looking at academic, NGO and business and how they feel about the opportunities that still exist. I mean, basically we talked about how there are a bunch of new barriers out there. We think there are things that both countries could do to make cooperation easier, but we still have lots of examples of actual cooperation moving forward, and people should continue to try to do it because this too shall pass and we'll need to work together again to actually fundamentally address climate change.

[Isa Ding]

And it's very reassuring to see that your message is very positively received by the Chinese and also people from other countries. And it seems like people really, really appreciated learning about your research and then hearing this message. And then we saw that repeated by the Italian delegation and members of the German delegation as well later on at the China Pavilion.

[Deborah Seligson]

Yeah, I think, I mean, there are two things. One is, yes, I think people who work on climate change are really realize it's a global problem and that we all have to work together. So even more than the average citizen, I think they are interested in international cooperation. The second thing is, you may have noticed at cop, a lot of the talks don't have a lot of new information in them. And because my talk was about actual on the ground research, we did both a survey and we did 20 long form qualitative interviews. People were actually interested that there was like solid content behind the talk, which there is some of that at some of the side events, but it can be hard to find.

[Isa Ding]

Yeah, I do want to talk a bit more about the daily podcast episode on China at a cop. A part of me feel like what they were saying is literally what you said in that foreign policy article six months ago. And by the way, the title of the New York Times piece, I felt at least the subtitle is a bit cringy. It's called, the title is A Flood of Green Tag from China is upending global climate politics. And the subtitle is at this year's climate Summit, the United States is out and Europe is struggling. But emerging countries are embracing renewable energy thanks to a gluttony of cheap equipment from China. Flood. Okay, but what is a glut? But anyway, tell us about your foreign affairs piece.

[Deborah Seligson]

Yeah, so Hu Bin and I wrote a piece a few months ago in which we argued that the over focus on the number of Chinese coal fired power plants was missing the larger picture, that solar and wind in particular were going to overtake that and really were where an increasing amount of China's electricity was from. And then secondly, that you don't need to only look at supply, you need to look at the transformation in demand. And that the Chinese ev progress has really meant that as this new electricity comes online, they're really changing the way people use fuel. Because one of the big challenges is you have to move everybody away from burning primary fuel themselves, coal, oil, or natural gas, to using electricity. Because electricity is so much easier to make clean. Whether you're doing that through wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal, whatever. So the Chinese transformation. And you know, I have a series of things I've written about in transportation. So we're not just talking about four wheeled electric vehicles, we're talking about two wheelers, we're talking about high speed rails, subways, electric buses, all these different front things. On the transportation front, and then on the home heating front, we're talking about the same heat pumps that everyone in the United States should be switching to right now.

[Isa Ding]

So what about the daily podcast and the piece in the New York Times? Do you agree with what they're saying? That China has a big presence at the cop, which seems to be the case. What about the United States absence?

[Deborah Seligson]

So the United States absence is very visible. I think what people around us have been saying is they would rather not have a U.S. government delegation than a U.S. government delegation bent on creating havoc. Right. Because cop decisions are supposed to be made by consensus. So if they were here, it would be very difficult. And we've heard at the International Maritime Organization, the US delegation really, there was a recent meeting and the US delegation.

Caused a lot of trouble.

[Isa Ding]

What was it like? What was it like at previous COPS where the US delegation was there and then what did the interaction amongst the parties between US And China. And obviously this year, a big difference on the Chinese side is that Xia is not here. So can you tell us a bit more about what the dynamics looked like in previous cops?

[Deborah Seligson]

So the US has always been a big player at the cop. And I think it is fair to say that the COP in previous years struggled when the US Was not pushing forward and was most able to move forward in the years when we had presidents that were actually interested in making progress on climate change.

Right.

Which unfortunately in the last several decades has been. Democratic presidents have been interested and Republican presidents have not. Although during the first Trump administration, with the big presence of US States and US Companies, there was still a feeling that America was very much involved. I think the New York Times really.

Got it right in pointing out that.

This year, one of the big absences is the lack of US Companies. The US States have been here in particular, Gavin Newsom, and there's an effort, but the US Just Americans are a much less visible presence. Getting back to your question on China. So China has a big presence at the cop. What's different between what China does and what the US Formerly could do, at least when the US had sort of positive climate momentum behind it, is being sort of one of the creative leaders and helping to figure out how to get to language that actually gets you to a negotiated conclusion. The Chinese have made it very clear they don't want to be leaders in that way in the negotiation. Yes, they want to be leaders in terms of technology. They want to be leaders in terms of examples of how to decarbonize your city. They want to be leaders in terms of working with other developing countries in terms of implementation. But they don't feel comfortable being a leader in this kind of international negotiation space. And people have noted that they often have not been speaking up in these venues. And the ones that we attended, the big participants were the European Union, Canada, the Arab Group, and sometimes the UK and so what we have right now, in some ways, the COP president is trying to lead everyone. But it would have been helpful if there were more countries sort of actively trying to push toward an effective and compromising conclusion. Yeah.

[Isa Ding]

Thank you. And I do want to ask you more questions on this front because years ago, I wrote a piece for the Diplomat. They asked me to write on China's leadership in the climate change space. And my argument was that the Chinese, they didn't want leadership. And, you know, leadership sounds like a thing that everybody wants in the west, but it's actually not the case in China, at least when I. What I. When I was writing the article. And in recent years, I've started to wonder, okay, maybe now, under Xi Jinping, China seems to be more confident and more comfortable with assuming a leadership position. And what I was hearing, what I've been hearing at the COP and especially in that episode by the daily podcast by the New York Times, it seems like they felt that China is really stepping up and really wants this leadership in the global action to combat climate change. And I don't know, can you just, like, say more about why you feel like it? Does it seem like China is still comfortable with a leadership position?

[Deborah Seligson]

So they want to be seen as the world leaders in renewable energy, the world leaders in electric vehicles, the world leaders in transforming their cities. They don't want to be given the task of coming up with creative new language for the treaties. Right. They're much more comfortable saying, yes, we'll accept this and no, we won't accept that than being the driving force of how we transform over time. And so that's been a challenge. Maria Repnikova has a brand new article in Foreign affairs on China and soft power. And this is one of the points that she makes that the Chinese have argued they want to be a rulemaker rather than a rule taker in the international arena, but they have more voiced what they don't like about the current rules. And there's lots of legitimate criticism of the current rules, but they haven't really voiced what they want new rules to look like.

[Isa Ding]

And why is that the case? Is it like a cultural thing or is it just the fact that, you know, China is often perceived to be a superpower, but it either doesn't feel like it's a superpower yet or it doesn't want to be seen as a superpower. Why is it the case that they're not stepping into the role that United States has been playing for decades?

[Deborah Seligson]

Well, when you put your neck out, some people aren't going to like it. And I think the Chinese really value being a friend to the Entire Group of 77 nations, the developing nations. And that's an incredibly diverse group, right? From some fairly wealthy nations at this point, to some of the poor, to all of the poorest nations on earth, all of the small island nations that are so under threat from climate change, et cetera. And so they try to not really push in any one direction because that entire group, as a group, actually finds it difficult to come to consensus. I mean, I think it was interesting the other day, we Stopped by the Fossil of the Day ceremony, which is a ceremony run by CAN International, which is the Climate Action Network and is the big consortium of all of the big. All of the climate NGOs around the world, practically. I'm sure there's some that aren't members, but pretty much everybody's a member. And they've been giving this award for decades. And every day they talk about whichever country they view as the most obstructionist to the treaty. And we asked whether China had been a Fossil of the Day in recent years, and they were like, nope, no, because they're very careful about what they say. They didn't say they come in with positive, constructive things. They said they're very careful about what they say. And who were they going after? They're going after the European Union that day.

[Isa Ding]

And Canada.

[Deborah Seligson]

And Canada. Oh, right, right, right. European Union was second, and Canada was the winner.

[Isa Ding]

European Union was the dishonorable mention. And Canada was the winner of the Fossil of the Day.

[Deborah Seligson]

Canada, of course, has this big, very dirty fossil fuel industry. So they're a complicated country. The European Union, of course, has been the country that has moved the furthest.

From where it was.

I mean, not country, group of countries. And it's, you know, it's European Emissions Trading Market has really sort of set the standard for the whole world. They've done some fairly dramatic decarbonization of their household sectors. EVs are moving very quickly in Europe, and they tend to use more mass transit than a lot of places around the world, including a lot of places in China. So choosing to pick on the European Union had a lot to do with different countries negotiating strategies and the fact that the European Union was feeling pressured to commit to a lot of specifics when they wanted some more general language. And the negotiations they were talking about were some of the ones we had seen where China didn't speak at all.

[Isa Ding]

Yeah. Tell us more about the negotiations. And one of the things that's been fascinating to observe are these negotiations where representatives from these different parties, mainly countries, but also groups of countries, sit around the table and basically negotiate the specific language sentences, commas, brackets in these drafts. And, you know, one thing I've learned is it's been a challenge for countries within the European Union to agree on things, but the European Union has to present a united front at some of those negotiations. And it's also incredibly interesting to observe the kind of language different countries and groups use. And, you know, with the European Union and with.

The. The British and the Canadians, it's quite interesting to see how oftentimes when they are being, let's say, de facto abstractionists, but because they're delivering this message in this very, very polite, civilized way that if you don't have any contacts or background, you might think they're being the good guys in the room and trying to advance the global climate agenda when they are trying to say, okay, let's put more indicators in and which de facto makes it more difficult for developing countries to access climate finance.

[Deborah Seligson]

So I think a lot of the language is kind of set piece and has been similar for years and years and years. I mean, we watch a big argument over whether they wanted to encourage coordination or they were to be urged to hold a series of workshops.

[Isa Ding]

There was like a, there was a debate over whether you urge or encourage.

[Deborah Seligson]

Well, it was either. Well, they didn't even. Right. It was urge or encourage and it was coordination versus a series of workshops.

[Isa Ding]

Yes, right.

[Deborah Seligson]

So coordination might be a workshop, it might be a phone call encourage, it might happen, it might not. The urging of it is trying to be more explicit. And you can easily see how the donor countries don't want to be forced into a series of workshops. That's a lot more work.

Right.

I mean, this question of how many metrics you need to get money and the fundamental fight over the years has been the developing countries say, we are victims here, you should just give us money. And the developed countries say, well, we.

Really aren't going to give you money.

Unless we know exactly what you're going to use it for.

And in order to require that, you.

Need to have project proposals, you need to have metrics for success, you need all these kinds of other stuffs. And they're saying, look, we're struggling here, we're struggling. You can't ask us to add all this extra bureaucracy because we don't have.

[Isa Ding]

The capacity to even measure all these. This long list of indicators. Yes.

[Deborah Seligson]

So that's been a fight for decades in the finance area. So there have been always two fights. How much money is actually going to get delivered and how many strings are going to be attached. What's really interesting is some of the research I've been looking at recently. One of the arguments developed countries have made is that increasing public finance, which is the only kind of finance developing countries want to count, actually has had a significant crowding out effect on private finance for climate in developing countries. And in many ways private finance tends to lead to more economic growth. It has a greater multiplier effect than public finance. So I think the finance issue is actually an incredibly complicated one. But it's been one that a number of the countries that are getting wealthier or might even be as wealthy as the traditional developed countries, which is the U.S. canada, Europe and Japan really are trying to avoid making commitments about. So we saw a lot of obstruction from the Arab group, speaking for developing countries and urging more specificity, et cetera, and promises for money. But of course, people would like to see some of the wealthy Arab nations contribute. And that's not a conversation conversation they want to have. And then China is in a similar situation where it likes to give its donations bilaterally and not through these funds. They don't want any kind of commitment to funds, but they do want to be a donor. And so a lot of pressure winds up on the eu, the uk, Canada and Japan. And that's why they often wind up being the fossil of the day.

[Isa Ding]

Speaking of fossil of the day.

Deb, I learned, I think, you know, one of the main things I learned from this cup is that you have never watched Jurassic Park. Can you tell us more about the Fossil of the Day award and exactly what goes down during that event?

[Deborah Seligson]

So there's a guy in a dinosaur blow up outfit dancing around and there's music playing and then another guy in a tuxedo with a skeleton on it and a mask comes out and announces the Fossil of the Day. The Fossil of the Day awards are. The runner up is a silver dinosaur head and the winner gets a gold dinosaur head. And then representatives from the dishonored countries stand up to accept their dishonor. There are people who work for NGOs, probably members of Cannes, who give a speech about how bad their own country is. And then they sing a song about the fossil of the day and it's ignominy. And it's very entertaining, I will say. I mean, so one of the things that this cop is that they did have some space right in the middle of the plenary halls for outside the actual hall, but right there for these demonstrations. So it was a place where civil society could actually make their voices heard at a location that the negotiators are actually around as opposed to being given some place by the door or something, which is often the case. And we've had just all kinds of demonstrations about protecting oceans, getting rid of oil, just taking care of indigenous demands, all kinds of things. And so it's been vibrant in that way. There was an attempt by a demonstration to get inside the conference venue, like a large demonstration. And people probably saw that video. It was on the New York Times website and everybody was sending me the link. I don't get the impression that it was actually dangerous. I mean, nobody got hurt, everything was fine. It's happened before at cops, but it is important not to have too much noise and ruckus inside the actual meeting venue because the countries do need to come to an agreement and if they can't hear each other, that's really not going to happen. That was a problem at Copenhagen where there were big demonstrations inside. So they've kept them. Usually these groups of demonstrators, I'd say are more on the 50 person level than hundreds. And so they've kept it within reason. But I think it is an example of how voices are being heard at this cop in ways that hasn't been true in recent years.

[Isa Ding]

Yeah, the protests have been amazing to watch and sometimes it can get quite festive. And the Fossil of the Day event was incredibly funny. And the, the song they sing is the. The melody for the song is basically Jurassic Park's theme anthem. That's when I learned you've never watched Jurassic park because you can remember the song. But anyway, so BYD has a big presence here. And one thing that surprised me, and perhaps I shouldn't be surprised, but it was interesting to witness this in person, is that a lot of the cars on the streets and the Ubers we've taken are BYD cars. I see some Hyundais and Toyotas. I see a lot of byd. We haven't really been to the Green Zone and the BYD Pavilion, the Green Zone, which we're looking forward to visiting. But tell us a bit more about byd adecock and Green electric vehicles in general.

[Deborah Seligson]

So BYD has a big plant in Brazil. They're actually producing these cars here, which is why Most of the EVs in Brazil are BYD. And BYD, of course, has a high quality electric vehicle for about US$10,000. So it's a much more appealing option for folks in a developing country like Brazil. I mean, Brazil is a country with vast discrepancies between rich and poor and not the world's greatest mass transit in most cities, although in some, like Curitiba, it's a model for the world. But a lot of the cities, like if you go to Sao Paulo, it feels like Los Angeles. Everybody's driving around sort of your average middle class person. So they want cars that are affordable.

At a middle class level.

And Chinese EVs really meet that need. And Chinese companies are no longer insisting that everything has to be manufactured in China. They're actually bringing the capacity to other countries, just like, you know, after World War II, the United States did to Europe and other places. So I think that's made BYD popular here. And they're definitely among the companies that are looking to increase their prominence around.

The world at this cop.

Presumably they're looking for new deals in new countries. I really haven't talked to them in any detail, but I mean, this is the two sides of Chinese leadership. Because I don't want our discussion of sort of China in the negotiations to obscure the fact that the other side has been incredibly successful.

Right?

That China as a place where this green technology is available and that it's available at the best price. You mentioned the term glut in the New York Times article a while back. And the problem with the word glut is it suggests there's too much of it out there. And the reality is we need to decarbonize the world. We need so much more wind, solar and electric vehicles than we're currently producing in any sort of macro sense. There's no glut at all. And so the big issue is whether other countries that want to have the capacity for this also step up and start encouraging their own domestic production. That, of course, was something that the United States was doing under the Inflation Reduction act under President Biden. And most of that has now been eliminated, leaving the US. The US's future in wind, solar and EVs really in a lot of question.

[Isa Ding]

And speaking of the glut of cheap products from China, quote, unquote, one concern with Chinese EVs is that because these companies are backed by government subsidies, local government subsidies, and they wouldn't be, they won't be able to remain, quote, unquote, shape if these subsidies go away. What do you think about that?

[Deborah Seligson]

I mean, most of the subsidies are. They get land, they're not going to lose the land. So I'm somewhat skeptical of that argument. The other thing is that Chinese domestic production at this point is incredibly automated. They have already figured out the economies of scale from automation. I visited an electric vehicle plant this summer in China. And like all of the hot jobs, the welding and the cutting and all that kind of stuff was all done by robots. When you went into that room. I mean, which are these giant facilities? The only people there were the guys running, working on screens, running the robots, and a bunch of people driving forklifts around. Cause it seems like forklifts are the least easy to automate. The vast majority of the workers were at the End of the assembly line, doing sort of final assembly, popping in windshields and that kind of thing, and doing quality assurance. And so the line wasn't moving that fast because they were being very careful to check all these different things. These were good factory jobs. You know, I've been in and out of Chinese factories since 1991, and they used to be hot and dirty and often dangerous. And these were clean, comfortable jobs that were very safe. All of the dangerous part of the work was being done by robots and the people were behind shields, behind screens. And so I was really impressed. And one of the things I've been following for a few years now is sort of the challenges of doing that level of automation in the United States versus China. So I don't know if you remember watching the movie American Factory. Yeah, so. So that company Fuyao, the way they end the movie is that Fuyao fires most of its workers and automates the factory. Now, of course, by automating it, suddenly all the danger goes away. All these people that are being burned and cut by glass, it's now robots and it's a much, much safer situation. What they don't then go on to tell you, because the movie was done and came out, is Fuyao then opened another four or five plants in the US Today, it employs slightly more people than it employed at its first plant and it's 60% automated. What's even more interesting is Fuyao's new plants in China are 90% automated. And the difference I think is that in China there's a lot of post high school, two year technical training for running robots in factories. And that just isn't a form of education that we have in the us we need to be giving people not four year. I mean, we need four year engineers, but we need a group that's below that, that just gets the technical training for running automation in factories. And right now what they're doing is retraining ordinary auto workers who've been doing a very different kind of work for 20, 30 years. And that's just less efficient.

[Isa Ding]

Wow. What I really appreciate about you, Deb, is that you can all. You can often tell the real story behind the headlines because you know so much. And this leads us to the second part of the podcast. So, listeners, we originally planned this episode to actually talk about 2007 when the US embassy in Beijing installed a air pollution monitor on its roof and tweeted out hourly air pollution data. And this became a veneer that exists this in a lot of books on China. I wrote about it in my book the Performative State. But this past summer when I was hanging out with Deb in China, I was shocked to learn that first, Deb, you're the one behind the air pollution monitor on the roof of the US Embassy in Beijing. And second, the story did not unfold in the way that's being covered in media and academia. And that's why I thought it would be great to talk about this on the Seneca podcast. So Deb, tell us what the standard story is and tell us what actually happened.

[Deborah Seligson]

So the standard story is that Chinese air pollution monitoring data was all wrong.

Prior to the embassy putting that monitor up. And we put that monitor up and.

Then suddenly everybody had access to accurate data. And that just isn't true. The data collected by the Ministry of.

The Environment was accurate.

The problem was what they supplied to the public was a 24 hour average rather than real time data. So it was not useful for an individual to decide what to do with their life. Like, if you knew the curve of air pollution in Beijing, you would know that if you wanted to go running, you should go in the evening and not the morning. Because the highest level of air pollution in Beijing at that time was pre dawn, because all the diesel trucks were only allowed to come in at night. And I as a parent was very frustrated because.

[Isa Ding]

So you were in Beijing at the time.

[Deborah Seligson]

I was living in Beijing at the time. My kids were going to international schools. And the international schools would use the air pollution number published in the newspaper each day to decide whether the kids.

Could go out to play or not.

But the air pollution number in the newspaper would be the 24 hour average of the air pollution two days before to one day before 12 noon of two days to one day. And then it would be published, you know, first thing in the morning, the next day. So it had nothing to do with the air pollution on the day that they were. And I kept, kept seeing my kid being kept in on days when the weather was good and then sent out on days when the air was terrible. And I tried to convince the schools to just look at the sky and they wouldn't buy that. They wanted a number and we showed them where you could get an air pollution monitor. So I spent like a year talking to them suggesting they actually buy a monitor. I was getting nowhere from the school. Yeah. And so we thought, what if we bought a monitor for the embassy and demonstrate it? And our original idea is if we got one for the embassy and started publishing the data.

The schools would learn from that and they would buy their own. As it turned out, they just used the embassy's one, even though they're not that close and they would do better with their own monitor. But so, so, and at the same time one of my colleagues from the EPA said actually you don't need to measure like all these different pollutants. That would cost $100,000. You can do the whole thing, you measuring PM 2.5 and sort of extrapolate from that. And that would only cost $25,000. These days you could do it for.

A thousand, I think.

I mean it's become so much cheaper to monitor. But.

So we wrote a proposal and it was basically about giving real time data. But when we did it, we realized we were going to need to provide the data not just to the embassy community, but to the whole American community. Because there's a rule that if the U.S. government has information about the health or safety of Americans.

[Isa Ding]

There'S a fire in the pavilions and we're ordered that every.

How did, how do you know how the fire started? Is it big? I would assume it's something like the electronics. Okay, that's annoying. Okay listeners, a surprise coming to you. We've been told to evacuate the building because a fire has started in one of the pavilions. So we will evacuate the building and then we'll come back to you in five minutes. Hey listeners, if you notice any changes in our sound quality, it's because in the middle of our conversation, a fire had broken out in one of the pavilions in the blue zone. It seems to be an electric fire and it seems to have been contained.

We don't have more information and it sounds like we could go back around 8pm but we don't really know.

[Kaiser Kuo]

But we have now evacuated the premises.

[Isa Ding]

And we are now back in Deb's apartment to record the second part of this interview. So Deb, should we revise our high evaluation of Brazil's management of this cop after the fire?

[Deborah Seligson]

I'm not really sure how to answer that question because.

Tents are very dangerous and subject to fire. So these temporary buildings I think are a bit risky because basically the entire blue zone, which is the official part of the proceedings, was a giant balloon. Right? It was this sort of blow up tent thing that was many, many football fields in size and there was a ton of wiring going through it, all of which was, you know, recently installed for this temporary thing running all these different events. And so I, I guess I'm not surprised that there was a fire. I'm Almost surprised that there hasn't been one before at one of these events. And it seems like the fire department responded very fast. It seems like nobody got hurt and they got everybody out. So I think that part of the management is a tribute to Brazil. There's this technicality that I thought was super interesting, where the Blue Zone is technically controlled by the United nations and it's international space. During the course of the meeting. And in fact, inside the Blue Zone, you don't see Brazilian police, which you do see on the outside. You see the blue police, like the famous blue helmet peacekeeping forces of the un and they're in charge of security. And the fire chief of Belem took over the Blue Zone, and the UN declared it it no longer an international zone, but under the control of the host government while this was going on. And I'm very interested to see whether at the end at whenever they reconvene, whether there's another announcement that it is now back under UN control.

[Isa Ding]

This is so interesting. I wonder how the handover actually works and, you know, whether they had to come to a formal agreement or is it because the tent has ripped open? So air got in, so then it just became de facto no longer UN territory.

[Deborah Seligson]

I suspect the firemen came in and that made it Brazilian, but who knows?

[Isa Ding]

Yeah, I also thought they handled it pretty well. I thought the evacuation was smooth and. Yeah, and we're just looking forward to getting back into COP30. So let's get back to where we stopped, where I believe you said the US Government had this rule. What is the rule again?

[Deborah Seligson]

So we were talking about the air quality monitor, and we were going to be producing new information for people that would affect their health because you could choose to exercise when it was low pollution and things like that.

So the U.S. government has a rule.

That if the U.S. government has information that would negatively affect people's health or safety, that it has to be shared with them. So we from the beginning had set it up so that we would be sending out daily notices with the air quality or something to inform people of it. Then Twitter happened and it suddenly became possible to share it with everyone in real time. The air quality monitor was actually connected and I don't know technically how directly to the Twitter feed, so that it was just. The readings were just being sent out on Twitter automatically. And that enabled American citizens to see it, which was our legal responsibility. But it also enabled Chinese citizens and anybody else in China around the world to see these numbers. And I think that was a revelation to Chinese citizens. You Know, as I said, the Chinese numbers had never been wrong. They just never were useful. And being able, when it looked bad outside to be able to look at Twitter in real time and say, oh yeah, it is really bad. Maybe I'll wait a couple hours before I go out or whatever. And, you know, for people who are asthmatic and things, this is like, really important. So it really did change people's perceptions of how data could be useful in their own lives and the kind of data they wanted to see. The Ministry of Environment then. So they were busy setting up a very elaborate set of urban air quality monitors throughout China. And it wasn't that year. It was a couple years later during the first of what came to be known as The Airpocalypses in 2010. The Now I'm trying to remember if it was the city of Nanjing or the province of Jiangsu. It was definitely there, but I can't remember which. Decided to start putting out their own data in real time before the whole network was set up. And the Ministry was pretty unhappy with them because they were like, they didn't want him jumping the gun. But they definitely were responding to the U.S. embassy data and to these really bad periods of air pollution that happened in 2010, 2011.

[Isa Ding]

That's so interesting. I still can't believe you are the one behind all this or started all this, but. And so the standard story is that that was the moment when China started to take air pollution control seriously and the US government pushed China to do that. And it seems like your interpretation is somewhat different.

[Deborah Seligson]

Yeah, because I think people don't understand how long it takes policy to be implemented.

And so, first of all, you had.

A lot of people in China advocating for air pollution control. Like back in the 80s and 90s, the first minister of SIPA, Chuga Ping, was a big advocate for this, as were many other people within the Chinese government and in academia. But the big change actually happened in 2003, which is seven years before the air apocalypse and four years before the US air pollution monitor, when the Chinese brought in new standards for power plants, which are the single largest cause of air pollution. And they were able to bring in these new standards because.

The power industry was kind of at a weak and distracted moment because the government had broken it up. It had been a monopoly, and then it was broken into five companies. And so I think honestly, when they brought in that New Reg in 2003, they weren't even paying attention. They also kind of assumed that they would be able to get away with ignoring it. And then in 2006 with the next five year plan, they put in hard targets for the first time. So China's five year plans have soft targets like please try to make it and hard targets you better make it. And so they brought in hard targets. A lot of provinces were failing to do much. And then 2007 there was a meeting with Wen Jiabao, the then premier, where he basically yelled at them and told them that they better start actually abating pollutant pollution, air pollution. And over the following two years you saw the largest build out of scrubbers.

The desulfurization equipment for coal fired power plants.

[Isa Ding]

What years would that be?

[Deborah Seligson]

2007-2009, the largest build out in the history of the world. No one has ever done what China did. And at the same time they put real time air pollution monitors on those power plants. And that they did with the advice of US epa. So US EPA was very supportive of China's air pollution mitigation efforts in those years. And the US EPA and the Ministry of Environment every year held a big meeting called Rackham, the Regional Air Quality Management Meeting, where they talked about how to manage all these air pollution things. And that's where I feel like people think, oh, it was these international people telling China that they had an air pollution problem. No, China knew it had an air pollution problem. It also had lots of experts who knew all the details of what the air pollution was and what the sources and all this kind of stuff. It is true that in terms of this continuous emissions monitoring equipment, it was very helpful for them to get advice from the US epa, since the US already had this kind of equipment and China had never used it before. But this was a Chinese driven effort and it really came from an environment Ministry that had long wanted to do this and a change in corporate structure that made it much easier to actually achieve it. And then once that happened, the companies started competing against themselves to.

Do better on pollution because China's always building new power plants and so they want the next permit to build the next one. So looking like you're clean to the local government becomes a positive thing. And so we really saw a lot of competition among the companies. And pretty soon the companies figured out what Western companies have understood for decades, which is if you're a strong company, you can push the weak ones out by being more compliant, not less compliant. The regulation can become protective. And so we then saw the big coal company Shenhuang and one of the biggest power companies, and then kind of up and coming one Zhejiang Energy push for even stricter air quality regulations. And that's what we have on Chinese power plants. They're stricter than the regulations in either the US or Europe.

[Isa Ding]

Wow. And is that going to be a part of your book? Yes.

[Deborah Seligson]

Along with what then happens, which is that the government became increasingly interested in making more progress in more sectors. And so this idea of ultra low emissions which they first brought in in power, and that was this initiative of Shenhua and Zhejiang Energy, it was not a government initiative. The government has since brought that in in steel and cement and other sectors. And what I discovered last summer when I was doing my research is not only does the central government have ultra low emissions standards, provinces have added their own that are tougher, cities have added their own that are tougher.

It's become really a contest to do.

Better, not to do worse.

[Isa Ding]

So it's no longer performative.

[Deborah Seligson]

No longer performative.

I'm sorry, Eza, I so look forward.

[Isa Ding]

To reading your book. So that meeting you talk about, the annual meeting between the US EPA and the NOW mee, is that still ongoing? When did it stop?

[Deborah Seligson]

I'm not sure when it stopped. My guess is it stopped sometime in the first Trump administration, because I'm pretty sure I went to it a few times even after I left left the State Department. So it was definitely going during the Obama administration, but I don't think it lasted through the whole Trump and first Trump administration.

[Isa Ding]

So it seems like China has solved.

[Kaiser Kuo]

Its PM 2.5 problem.

[Isa Ding]

And is that it or what else is going on?

[Deborah Seligson]

So the irony of this whole thing is once upon a time, people thought of PM2.5 as the main problem in China. And as they've cleaned up PM2.5, it's actually increased the amount of sun that gets down to the earth because PM2.5 essentially creates shade. And so because ground level ozone is produced with sunlight as a catalyst, as PM 2.5 has gone down, the amount of ozone at ground level and ground level ozone is a pollutant. Ozone up in the stratosphere is what protects us from sunburn. But the amount of ground level ozone has actually been increasing. And as with PM2.5, the amount of research showing bad health outcomes has also increased. So China still has a huge air pollution challenge still to address. And actually with climate change and everything else and the amount of sunshine, I mean, other countries are having to deal with more pollution than they used to. Even you can emit less and have more pollution, actually. And the challenge with ozone is that one of the sources or part of the source is Just the nitrogen in the air. So trying to eliminate it involves trying to eliminate like many, many different sectors and different sources. And since 2020, China has been trying to control one of them, which is the volatile organic compounds, because ozone is produced by essentially a mixture of a reaction between the volatile organ organic compounds in the nitrogen. But it's really challenging. And until China truly eliminates fossil fuels, I think it's still going to have some significant air pollution problems. But the air pollution is definitely way better than it used to be. And I think it's been a strong example to other.

Developing countries that air pollution is addressable with economic growth.

[Isa Ding]

And speaking of ozone, do you have any memory of the negotiation of the Montreal Protocol? And are they still talking about this at this cop?

[Deborah Seligson]

So the Montreal Protocol is completely separate from the climate change agreement. So it's under the Vienna Convention, I believe, but it's a separate one on stratospheric ozone protection. China has been recognized by that secretariat as like a model participant in terms of phasing out the most dangerous ozone depleting substances. That is a treaty that continues to be successful. It's ongoing. What was really important a few years ago is one of the problems is that some of the substitutes for the original substances, while better for the ozone, were actually climate gases.

And there was this issue of the easiest way to get rid of them would be to an agreement through the conventions around ozone rather than the climate convention. For one thing, that other one works better. Everybody agrees to it, it's more easily enforceable. But for a long time there was an argument of, wait a minute, this isn't actually affecting the stratosphere, so why should we do it? And what now may be at least 10 years ago, because time is a flat circle. There was something called the Kigali Amendments where they actually agreed to outlaw these, these better chemicals for ozone that were worse for the climate. So these two agreements do have some interrelationship to each other, but the problems are quite distinct. And the big thing, I mean, the Montreal Protocol has been called the most successful treaty in UN history. And one of the things to realize is just how much cheaper it was to solve the ozone problem than to solve climate change. So I did it a few years ago, so I don't remember the numbers exactly, but if you add up, the amount of money that developed countries have given to developing countries, which was the key mechanism in that treaty to phase out their ozone depleting substances, was in the billions.

[Isa Ding]

Wow.

[Deborah Seligson]

And for, you know, and the amount of finance that the world has committed to get for addressing climate change is 1.3 trillion.

Right.

By 2035, they're talking about they reached 100 billion a year. In 2021, they're supposed to reach 350 billion a year.

Now do you think it'll happen?

Well, I mean they've always reached these, but late. But the entire sum total of what was needed for the Montreal Protocol is just so much less that it was a much easier situation to deal with. And it was these specific set of man made chemicals that didn't exist before the 1920s. And you know, over time they found good substitutes. The challenge, I mean, and I think the finance problem is just incredibly difficult. And I don't know, but that was where, you know, that was what the New York Times was talking about. In terms of China, excitement is it is now cheaper to put up a bunch of solar PV panels to generate electricity than to build any kind of power plants. So the economics are actually moving toward it being the logical thing to do. And that's really positive on the electric vehicle front in terms of, you know, four wheeled standard automobiles. EVs are not cheaper than the cheapest cars, but a $10,000 car is not a bad, bad deal. Right. And the other thing that China offers the world is the example of the widespread use of two wheelers, electric two wheelers. So China has over 400 million on its roads and they spread rapidly in China because China had much, much earlier and most of the big cities outlawed motorcycles. So if people don't have the opportunity to use a gasoline driven vehicle, they're very excited to use an electric vehicle. Right. And so that's going to be a challenge in other developing countries, but I think that's a good transition for them to make. And the Chinese example also shows, getting back to my original, the foreign policy article is that providing sufficient electricity for this transition is an important part of the transition, that even if it's not the cleanest electricity, shifting over to electric vehicles is less polluting in terms of climate change than gasoline powered vehicles. And of course it's way less polluting in terms of urban air pollution.

[Isa Ding]

And do you see this happening perhaps in Vietnam? They have a lot of two wheelers there.

[Deborah Seligson]

So I've heard that there's some companies in Southeast Asia, Chinese companies, marketing. I know of more in Thailand. I'm not sure what the situation is in Vietnam, but Thailand, Vietnam are kind of the obvious places you would want to see it next because two wheelers are such a widespread part of their transportation system. We heard the other day that in Africa a lot of the two wheelers are are coming from India rather than from China. India has a big push for electric two wheelers, but so far in India the numbers are in the millions as opposed to the hundreds of millions. So hopefully they can get that going in a bigger way.

[Isa Ding]

The other thing the New York Times talked about, besides the glut of cheap solar, cheap EVs, is the chachka line at the China Pavilion.

I think one of the people on the podcast said people are lining up to do business with China, but my observation is that they were just there to get the free panda merch. What do you make of the long Chachka line at the China Pavilion? And what do you make of soft power? You know, another theme on that podcast episode.

[Deborah Seligson]

So, first of all, I suspect when.

They said lining up to do business, they meant in meetings with Chinese officials, as opposed to the folks trying to get stuffed pandas. But both things are happening. And I do think the craze for every bit of panda merchandise is a little bit of soft power, actually. And it's interesting because as I already mentioned, I think Maria has a fantastic article and she mainly argues that Chinese soft power is focused on economics, on commercial relations and providing aid, but it's all about economic growth and economic relationships and not about, and has traditionally not been as much about culture or about values. And that tchotchka line is a little bit of a culture contribution and it definitely was very popular. But I think if you look at the sessions at the Chinese Pavilion, that's their more traditional sort of soft power, because many of the sessions are China and Africa cooperation, China and the South Pacific cooperation, China and Latin America cooperation. And it will highlight some combination of official development aid type things, but often a lot of stories of commercial relationships in those various sessions and that the Chinese have now been doing for several years at these, these cops. And I do think that is a part of the Chinese version of soft power.

[Isa Ding]

The assumption behind the soft power discussion is obviously that the belief that China lacks soft power vis a vis the United States with its Disneylands, Mickey Mouse and South Korea with their K pop demon hunters.

And what do you do you think? Do you agree that China lacks that kind of soft power? And do you think and perhaps the line between soft power and hard power is not that clear. And I'm always puzzled by these soft power discussions and I just want to hear more from you.

[Deborah Seligson]

Well, so I mean, I think it's interesting to bring up Korea because Korea Has. I mean, you could call it soft power, but I don't think it causes them to be able to coerce other countries to do what they want politically, which has been the argument about US soft power, that it makes it easier to get actual political things done. What is true of both Mickey Mouse and Korean K pop and everything is that it's valuable IP and so in the world, in the 20th century world economy, this stuff is actually valuable in and of itself. And I think what's interesting in the United States case is I don't think you have much soft power to get other people to do things you want when they find you inconsistent, when they don't trust trust you. And that kind of, I don't know what, what to call that soft power. High. But credibility is what we call it in international relations, right? That kind of credibility is enormously valuable and is what the United States is losing right now. And of course, in the climate context, it's hard not to think that it should have lost it a long time ago. Right? I mean, our history is, is we signed the UNFCCC and actually ratified it, then we negotiated the Kyoto Protocol and never joined it, then we negotiated the Paris Agreement and we left it, then we rejoined the Paris Agreement and now we've left it. So we're not very credible and we never have been.

Right.

So the question is, I think what's more important for the Chinese is not so much soft power, but credibility. How reliable are you? Can people trust you and are you supportive? Because I think one of the things that probably makes China less credible than it should be is its tendency toward rather exaggerated threatening language from time to time, especially towards smaller countries. And I don't know that it always or even often follows through on these threats, but I think that can make countries somewhat reluctant to follow them. I mean, I'm a big fan of David Lake's book Hierarchy, which argued that the sort of post 1990s world that sort of got threatened to a significant extent by the Iraq War. And I think then has been. The Trump administration is after the book, but it's sort of the end of it is that his argument is that the US Gave other countries both economic and security advantages in return for them being willing to do what we wanted in international relations. So that inclusion, things like basing and essentially subsidizing their defense. But it also included our incredibly low tariff regime. We had the lowest average tariffs in the world, except for maybe some free ports like Hong Kong. And that was a trade off for the advantages that we got by other countries willingness to go along with us and they often went along with us whether we were right or wrong.

[Kaiser Kuo]

Right.

[Deborah Seligson]

I mean, countries like Australia went into Iraq with us and I'm not sure why. Right. So what I've always thought was, you know, the weakness of a, well, China's gonna eclipse the US argument was that the US Traditionally had lots and lots of allies and the Chinese don't have very many at all. We're not treating our allies so well anymore. So I'm not sure where that, that future goes.

[Isa Ding]

Do you think the Chinese attitude, mannerism toward other countries, bigger countries, smaller countries, could be highly or perhaps more highly dependent on who the interlocutor, who the negotiator is? Because it just seems like, like Xie Zhenghua, for instance, has been extremely diplomatic, friendly friends with everybody and really, really well liked. And then at some other point you see something on Twitter and it just, you know, is wolf warrior diplomacy. Right. So how do you make of this complexity?

[Deborah Seligson]

So Xie Jianhua, who was the Minister of Environment and then became the Deputy Chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, which were actually the people in charge of climate negotiations. And that was his thing.

To some extent. He's an unusual figure in China, especially in terms of international relations. I feel like I've known a lot of people like him in domestic policy roles, both in health and the environment, who are just, just really dedicated to the topic that they really care about the health and welfare of the Chinese people and the ecology of the planet, et cetera, et cetera. And that's what drives them. And one of the things I feel like from my years of diplomatic experience is you go anywhere in the world and you meet some people in government who that's really their motivation. And that absolutely was, is Xie Jianhua. But he's, you know, retired and deserves his well deserved rest. So as I was saying, there were people all the way back in the 80s and 90s who really cared about the environment. I haven't looked back to see his writings in those eras, but I would Suspect he is one. You know, he won this UN Environment Award all the way back in 2000, 2003. So he has been very dedicated to environment for many decades and he really cared about it. He also, yeah, I mean, I would say.

Held grudges less than a lot of other people in just international society. Right.

[Isa Ding]

So interesting.

[Deborah Seligson]

Right, because the relationship between the US and China at Copenhagen was terrible. And it was the US that started got.

[Isa Ding]

Tell us more.

[Deborah Seligson]

Oh, okay. It got Nasty and ad hominem. So what happened was, so this is all the way back in 2009. And what happened, and this is like an important turning point where for the first time ever, China made a commitment to a national goal on reducing climate gases in a sort of public forum. And it was reducing the rate of increase because it was still developing, its emissions were still way lower than the US or Europe, and on a per capita basis, just ridiculously lower. But you had these three days running up to US Thanksgiving where the us, China and India each announced equivalent goals heading into Copenhagen, because these cops that are now in November used to be in December. And then people started complaining about it and interfering with their Christmas breaks.

So.

We announced these goals.

That was a major achievement, major change for China. But the Obama administration, which had just, just come in the previous January, was also trying to pass domestic climate legislation because in fact they were hoping to go to Copenhagen with a package of this incredible bill and all this stuff, and they hadn't done it yet. So there was a lot of posturing for the domestic audience. And some of that involved a press conference right before the chief negotiator flew to Copenhagen where he said that the US really couldn't do anything unless China and India did something. I was in China at the time.

I wasn't in India and I was in college. So. So I don't know how the Indians.

Reacted, except that I think they knew that the attack was really aimed at China because I mean, their emissions at the time were tiny, even though everybody could see someday they would be large.

So that press conference happened in Washington and then everybody gets to Copenhagen and you started this series of rival press conferences between the US and China and they got increasingly ad hominem, especially on the Chinese side. I think they felt kind of overwhelmed by trying to execute this fight in English with an English speaking press.

It was before they'd really figured out.

This fancy pavilion approach.

It was before they figured out how.

To court the foreign press. And they just, their point of view did not get relayed at all. The Americans were able to completely dominate the PR space.

And so.

It led to a lot of bad feeling. And then afterwards, the US negotiator and the Chinese negotiator spent a lot of time together and started working to build the relationship back up. And she was just willing to do it. And my impression is it's because he really, really cares about environmental issues.

[Isa Ding]

We can all use more people who hold less grudges.

And was Copenhagen the cop where the line was Three hours long to register.

[Deborah Seligson]

The first day because they just had not planned on so many people. And it was before these strict quotas on how many. There were no quotas, I don't think, at Copenhagen. So groups that maybe had never come or had brought one person were suddenly bringing 20, and they were completely unprepared.

[Isa Ding]

So for all the cops that you have been to, what would you say was the most surprising, biggest accident, shock or drama that you've had besides perhaps today's fire?

[Deborah Seligson]

I mean, I don't know if it's shock or drama, but, I mean, Paris was special. They really got to an agreement, you know, and it was a major step forward for the world. I mean, when they actually achieved it, I think everybody just felt fantastic.

[Isa Ding]

Wow. I thought the other thing that you were saying about language is something that left a big impression on me, this cup, is that being in the negotiation rooms, you just realize how difficult it is to negotiate not in your first language. And you could also see that different cultures communicate differently, and not all countries know exactly how to do this in, again, the Western way. And then that could also lead to misunderstandings and perhaps bitter feelings. And as you said.

[Deborah Seligson]

Right.

[Isa Ding]

And that could lead to grudges and unnecessary grudges.

[Deborah Seligson]

Well, what's interesting is a lot of.

These climate negotiators have been traveling around the world together, going to these meetings together for decades. They know each other very, very well. So I think that helps a bit on the language side is that people do know each other's linguistic quirks. Right. Oh, that guy always sounds really blunt, but that's just the way he is or whatever. It's also true that they know how to push each other's button buttons, because they know each other really well. You remember, this COP is only one of many meetings they have during the year to get ready for each year's cop. So the actual professional negotiators are with each other all the time. Yeah. I don't really understand how the UN decides which meetings get interpreters and which don't, because, of course, the UN has official languages with interpreter and all that. I mean, you know, they have multiple official languages, but, yeah, in all the meeting rooms, it seemed like everybody was just speaking English, and I didn't see any interpreters.

[Isa Ding]

So what are your favorite things at this very cup? Mine would include the regional coffees at different pavilions. Saudi coffee in particular, I think, is ambrosia. I like the national indigenous outfits. And the protests have been surprisingly interesting and even fun to watch, even though the Topic itself is heavy. So what are your feelings just kind of walking around the pavilions of different countries and groups?

[Deborah Seligson]

Yeah, I love to see who's advocating what and all the different topics and what the different countries choose to highlight about themselves. That's super interesting. You neglected the most important cultural aspect of the cop, which is the Brazilian flavored ice creams with all the, you know, acai and all kinds of other tropical fruits I'd never heard of. And the line stretched around the black all the time for people trying to buy ice cream and so getting a little bit of cultural flavor. I do think my favorite thing in terms of what I admire about this COB was just how many local people were in the Green Zone and that this was a very inclusive cob.

[Isa Ding]

Yes, well, it's also a bit jarring to feel the difference when you leave the Blue Zone and enter the Green Zone. And all of sudden, a sudden the space has just become a lot more diverse than it's already quite diverse in the Blue Zone. And I swear, after three days in the Blue Zone, I was startled to see the first baby I had seen in three days. And I saw a baby in the Blue zone. I was shocked.

But yeah, lots of indigenous representation and lots of. Of crafts and was really fun to walk around the Green Zone as well. And there was that big dance party that we walked into the other night. And you're completely right. The ice cream is absolutely the best part of this COP experience. And all the flavors are amazing and nothing that we've ever had before, so it's quite something. And does this make you look forward to Turkey next year?

[Deborah Seligson]

Yes.

Well, we happened to have lunch with the Turkish interpreters to their minister who was negotiating getting to host the COP next year. So we got to hear.

[Isa Ding]

It was hours before the announcement, the agreement was reached.

[Deborah Seligson]

So we got to hear all about how great Antalya the place that they're going to hold it is. So it sounds like it's going to be really beautiful.

It was a choice between Turkey and Australia.

And a month ago, everyone thought Australia had it in the bag. Australians made a proposal that was then plus Pacific island nation. So it seemed like a very inclusive proposal. And obviously they have like fairly good organizational capability, et cetera. But in the meantime, the Turks really put up a campaign for it. And in Australia, a significant amount of the population was opposed to it because they thought it was going to be a big waste of government money, Taxpayer money. Yeah, these things are expensive to put on. And so they came to this very Interesting compromise that I'm very interested to see how it plays out where Turkey will host the cop, but Australia will be the president of the cop, so they'll be the one managing the meeting while Turkey will be the one, you know, having the fabulous pavilions and making sure everybody tastes delicious Turkish food and checks out the beaches and everything. So I think it's going to be a very interesting and, and how that plays out in terms of prestige, in terms of how each is recognized as the cop and all of that is going to be very interesting. If you're interested in your cross cultural issues, Australia and Turkey trying to work together may be super interesting.

[Isa Ding]

Is that going to be the first COP where the presidency and the host country are different?

[Deborah Seligson]

I can't say a hundred percent, but the last time. So in, in 2020 they were supposed to host the cop in Spain and then Covid happened and originally they thought, oh, it's a. Covid's really bad in Spain, but we'll just move it to the UK and Covid's not so bad in the UK, right. So this is early in 2020 and.

Of course by the middle of 2020.

They were like, oh, we're not hosting a cop anywhere.

So there was no cop in 2020 and then it wound up moving to.

The UK in 2021. And I think Spain might have had.

Some kind of role, but it seemed.

Like the UK was at least. My, my recollection is it seemed like the UK simply ran. So I don't know that there's ever been a joint COP before.

[Isa Ding]

So why does Australia want the presidency so much and why does Turkey not care about it as much?

[Deborah Seligson]

So Australia is very much like the United States and Canada in having when they have a more left wing, but it's really center left government. They really do try to go ahead with climate policy. And when they have a right wing government they tend to backtrack. Australia, Canada and the US have a lot of things in common, right? Enormous land mass where people live fairly spread apart and so you have a lot of private transportation and emissions. People live in single family houses that.

Use more energy energy.

So they have pretty high per capita emissions. And they actually had originally been a party to the Kyoto Protocol. They adopted a cap and trade system, then they dropped the cap and trade system. And at the moment Australia has a Labor government, a left, so center left government with Albanesi and I think he wants to do stuff on climate change. And there's no question that when countries host the cop, they're Usually under some pressure, especially, I mean, democratic countries to show that they're doing stuff to be able to bring to the members of the world community their successes. And so I think he's interested in it in order to try to drive the conversation in Australia forward. I mean, it's also true that Australia shares a lot of the same challenges from climate change as the United States does. I mean, we've had these horrendous fires in the west, they've had unbelievable fires in Australia. So climate change is an urgent issue for them, but they have the same polarized politics. Turkey has never been a big player in the climate world. I mean, I, I don't know, but I would suspect they're more interested now in things like solar than they used to be. But they've traditionally like Australia been a big coal burning country. And my guess is that they would like to that it's more like Bali, Indonesia in 20, in 2007. They would love to see more tourism to the area that they're going to highlight. Right? I mean, there were a series of cops that happened in places that had lost tourism for one reason or another. So in INDONESIA, the Bali cop was four years after the Bali bombings of 2003, which you probably have no recollection of, but it radically reduced torture tourism to Bali. And so they were interested in bringing the world to Bali and all those TV cameras and getting a lot of highlights that everybody was happy and safe. And I can't tell you, everyone we interacted with in Bali, like restaurant people, taxi drivers, the people working at the cop, they were all like, are you having a good time? Are you gonna tell your friends and family? I mean, it really was like a push. And of course we all did have a good time. And Cancun, it was during one of these periods where there had been a bunch of like drug issues in Mexico and US Tourism had dropped way down because people were afraid. And so again, they had these big resorts with nobody in them and they wanted to bring people to first of all fill up the resorts and then to get people to go home and say, hey, this is, is good. So my guess is I don't know what the tourism situation in Turkey is. I, I really have no knowledge. But my guess is they're looking for more and they see this as a big opportunity to highlight Turkey on the world stage.

[Isa Ding]

Wow, I simply cannot wait. But if a fire breaks out next year, is that going to be Australia's fault or is that going to be Turkey's flawed?

[Deborah Seligson]

Well, so like cops Like Bali, most of the meetings were in, like, these hotel ballrooms as opposed to giant tents. So.

I wonder if there are more permanent structures in, in a place with tens of or hundreds of thousands of hotel rooms that they'll be able to use. It'll be interesting to find out.

[Isa Ding]

Thank you. And lastly, what do you make of this critique of the COP being something that is highly carbon emitting, consuming while people are trying to solve climate change and this whole hypocrisy critique. And what do you make of that?

[Deborah Seligson]

I. I hear it, but I don't know how you solve problems without getting people together. I don't. I mean, we've all been through life on Zoom and it just doesn't work for a lot of things. It does work for other things. Like, I am a huge fan of watching academic talks on Zoom. I'm usually just trying to learn something. I'm not trying to interact with anyone in any big way. But I'm also a big fan of going to a few conferences so that I actually do meet up with people and talk about those next projects and brainstorm and spend time. And I do think it matters that this group of climate negotiators actually have to talk to each other and break bread together and discover which kind of coffee they like together. And so I don't see a way to get around the fact that we humans were built for interaction. And so, yeah, it uses carbon. And someday we'll figure out how to make aviation carbon free. And maybe the young person who comes to one of these COPS and is learning about it is the person who gets inspired to figure out how to do it. Do that. I don't know. But I do think that I. I don't. I mean, I guess I. My whole life has been so enriched by spending time in other countries and other cultures. And I. I mean, I meet people from Europe. I've not actually ever met anyone like this in the US who says they will never travel again because it's bad for the climate and everything. And I just. That is a sad life to me.

And so I want to solve the problem. I believe technology will be part of the answer.

But I don't want us to become isolated from each other. I don't think that will make any of us better off.

[Isa Ding]

I completely agree with you. I was dreading coming here, but when I'm here and I've. I completely understand why this got to be in person. And.

First of all, you can't do this negotiation on Zoom at all because it's completely different. And second, you want, want people to be there to influence the negotiators. So you got allow the protesters and the NGOs and the observers who are there to observe and in a way monitor the entire process and to offer feedback. And oftentimes these feedbacks are taken and adopted. Do you think this is why they might have limited the amount of badges in recent years?

The climate, the concern for carbon emissions or.

[Deborah Seligson]

I think the badge limitation has been due to the increased demand and just the sheer logistics of so many people. I mean, the other thing about the COP is even with this limited number of badges, the venue is enormous. I mean, we all wind up walking 15,000 steps a day just trying to get around the place.

Right.

And so if you let in more badges. The other thing is that those of us from the United States have been dealing with ever decreasing number because they've been trying to increase the number of people from developing countries. So I think when they first started allocating badges, there was a bit of a first come, first serve who was already sort of in the system. And that was very heavily weighted toward the developed world and the US Very heavily with, you know, sort of the uk, Germany and, you know, and, and a lot of developing countries. I mean, you can see there's a moment in a developing country when they. When the public becomes interested in climate change. Right. I mean, I lived in China before 2007 and after 2007, and no one in China was interested in climate change until 2007. And I was heading off to Bali and cab drivers were asking me about it. It was amazing. You know, it was in the news, people were talking about it. And I suspect that happens in other countries as well. And many of them had happened in that post2010 era when the badges started being limited and so reallocating them. As more groups come in, they've had to take away badges from other groups.

[Isa Ding]

And the location of Turkey next year kind of reassures as it's a bit easier to travel to than Adelaide in Australia. Would you say so?

[Kaiser Kuo]

Or.

[Isa Ding]

Yes, for us at least. I don't know.

[Deborah Seligson]

Well, and for all our friends in Asia and Africa.

[Kaiser Kuo]

Hi listeners.

[Isa Ding]

So far you've been listening to a recording we did on Tuesday, November 20th in Belem, Brazil. And the recording was split in half because a fire broke out in the middle of it. Anyway, now that the COP has wrapped up and after seeing both the final agreement and the pretty dramatic disagreements during the closing plenary session, we thought it would be fun to record a final segment where Deb shares her thoughts on the outcomes of the cop, what they mean for the UN and what the.

[Kaiser Kuo]

Future holds for China.

[Isa Ding]

So, Deb, this COP didn't end on time, despite the Brazilian presidency's hope that it would.

[Deborah Seligson]

Yeah, I mean, they don't usually end on time.

[Isa Ding]

And it hasn't ended on time since 2003, apparently.

[Deborah Seligson]

Yeah, I mean, basically, people, you know, they finally get their heads together and realize they're gonna have to come to a compromise when they see their hotel rooms running out.

[Isa Ding]

So usually it ends on a Saturday or. Or Sunday after the Friday closing.

[Deborah Seligson]

Yeah, and there have been plenty of times when it's ended even later than this one. I think the Brazilian did okay at trying to push the schedule.

[Isa Ding]

Yeah. And the. The airport situation actually wasn't as bad as we expected either. The lines were really long, and then the airline started to just move people on the flight that departs the soonest to the front of the line, and then told us who are leaving on the later flight to get out of the line. So I thought that was really great.

[Kaiser Kuo]

That they did that as well.

[Isa Ding]

Anyway, the final plenary ended in a quite dramatic fashion with some Latin American countries raised strong objections to the.

Brazilian presidency. Paraguay, Argentina, Panama, and Colombia, I believe, amongst others. And then you see, Russia jumped in and then called these countries children who want to get their hands on all the sweets, but then are not willing to share them. And this whole lecture was delivered in Spanish, no less. And then later, you see Russia and some of those Latin American countries then getting on the same side, asking the presidency to put in a tag that gender means biological sex. So then anytime the word gender is mentioned, it needs to be specified. It refers to male and female sexes as biologically defined. But then these countries didn't get booed like the Vatican, when the Vatican said the very same thing a few minutes earlier. So that my brain just exploded at all this theater and all this ridiculousness. Deb, is this always like this at the cops?

[Deborah Seligson]

I think it's almost always like this. I'm not sure. Like, in a. Like Paris. Maybe not. But usually there are countries that are upset and they raise objections. And because this part of the UN operates by consensus and they're never going to get everybody to agree, the chair kind of gavels through a certain number of objections, and that's what the Latin Americans were objecting to. They had something they wanted to have addressed, and the chair ignored them and gaveled it through. The gender discussion was a bit ridiculous and a waste of time, but people like drama. It was interesting that most of the BRIC countries actually did make little speeches saying they supported the chair. I mean both Russia, India. I'm not sure if there were some others.

[Isa Ding]

Yeah, Russia did, India did. I don't think China did. I watched the whole thing and I thought this was interesting because we were texting and then, you know, I told you that it's quite interesting that how China really kept its mouth shut. And then we kind of talked about, you know, why, what are the pros and cons of speaking up. And anyway, this is all quite interesting. And so this leads me to my next question.

A lot of people seem disappointed by the latest version of the global mutirao decision. So mutirao is the Brazilian word for collective effort. A Brazilian friend told me it means that it's a word that doesn't exist in English. So an example would be there's a lot of trash in the community, on the community beach. And then people say, okay, this Sunday we're going to have a muti row and collect the trash, pick up the trash on the beach together. So I thought it's a really, really meaningful word and a symbol for collective action.

So at the beginning, the Brazilian presidency set pretty high ambitions for what they hope to achieve at this cop. And I'm sure they're disappointed. My students left the cops saying they were disappointed, they were depressed. We see developing countries frustrated by the lack of movement on adaptation finance, which is the financial and technological support that's supposed to flow from the global north to the global south to help the most vulnerable countries to adapt. And then the EU seemed disappointed that the document made no direct mention of this term transitioning away from fossil fuels, which is the language that they liked. And most media outlets, it sort of varies, but most media outlets are reporting that no meaningful progress has been made. And what about you, Deb, are you disappointed as well?

[Deborah Seligson]

Well, I would have liked to see more, but I think it's important to note in the multi route decision they note that at the time of the Paris agreement, the expectation was that business as usual would lead to 4 degrees Celsius increase in global temperatures in this century. And now we're down to somewhere between 2.3 and 2.5 degrees. Way back at Copenhagen we agreed to try to stay below 2 degrees. And then in Paris we said 2 degrees, but we'll try for one point. So there's more work to do. There absolutely is more work to do, but the work is happening and the NDCs are the nationally determined contributions from each country are coming in somewhat lower. And we also have this kind of miracle in green tech happening where wind and solar is cheaper than any of the other alternatives for electricity generation. And so transition is actually a more natural process today in terms of just economic logic than it ever has been before. So I'm pretty optimistic actually about the future. Also. This was the COP that might have been a complete failure of the UN process. Without the US there, you could have had just kind of a global rebellion. If one of the world's two largest emitters isn't even participating, why should anybody do anything? And that didn't happen and everybody did stay together and the process is continuing. And I think that actually was a major victory for the UN process.

[Isa Ding]

Yeah, we talked a lot about the counterfactuals and you know, before going to the COP height I, you know, I obviously follow it and read about it because I work on this work on environmental politics, climate change, but I was skeptical. I, you know, always, because in the news obviously you also read a lot of the negative reporting and I thought the process seemed mostly symbolic, performative because that, that's also something that I've written about. But then in bellum we talked a lot about, okay.

When we're assessing progress, we ought to think about what would have happened or what would happen without the UN fcc, without a cop. And like you said, I think we could easily imagine that without the US presence, if we also did not have the UN FCCC system and the meeting of the parties, we could see that all the countries just go back to business as usual, basically abandoning this collective action to combat climate change, which honestly.

I don't think that's the entire thing I saw. I definitely believe countries positions still very much reflect their own national interests and that's quite natural. But I have come to the conclusion that the system itself is also what basically prevents this race to the bottom, if you will, situation, which could well be a counterfactual without this whole thing.

[Deborah Seligson]

Well, I think countries self interest includes their concern about severe climate change really affecting everything in their societies. And so that's driven the discussion in two ways. One is for developing countries to be demanding more action from the rich countries and for another thing to really get adaptation going because people are experiencing climate change right now. So I don't think self interest anymore means let's just burn fossil fuels. I mean this was my argument about 20 years ago when it came to China that up until sometime around 2006, 2007, China definitely viewed the whole climate change process as simply an impediment to growth and that what they needed was fossil fuels. But by about 2007, there was much more of an awareness of both what extreme climate change would do to China in terms of impacts on agriculture, risk to infrastructure, et cetera, and seeing the links between climate change and air pollution, which we had discussed earlier. And so for different countries, that realization comes at different times, Right? But I think at this point the majority of the world's countries do see an advantage to a cleaner development program.

[Isa Ding]

You're so light because when we say national interest or national self interest.

I totally agree. We ought to think about whose interest is this, because sometimes it's just kind of false or fuel interest channeled through lobbying and.

Influence into this national interest. But really, when we sit back and look at national interest in the long run, in the short run, you're right, it really needs some probing and reconceptualization.

And then in China, example is also quite important. And that leads me to my question on China, which I was about to ask earlier, but then I totally got distracted by myself. So earlier in the first segment of this podcast in Balant, we talked about the New York Times piece saying that China was casting itself as a leader or a stabilizer of the global system. And another New York Times piece that came out recently on November 22, then said that China chose not to step into the leadership vacuum created by the US and by the way, while I was searching for that article, the earlier article on Google, I discovered that the New York Times actually really loves using the word galut, especially in its China reporting. So apparently I just don't read enough. New York Times have noticed that earlier.

[Kaiser Kuo]

My apologies to the New York Times.

[Isa Ding]

Anyway, so I think the confusion over whether China at this cop, or China in general, whether it's asserting leadership or whether it doesn't want leadership, comes partly from this contrast we see between the very prominent, very lively, their vibrant China Pavilion at the cop, which is also very centrally located and became our meeting point just because it was so centrally located. And simultaneously the very low profile of the Chinese negotiators at the cop. I don't think they spoke in the final plenary session. I went through a few negotiations and I think I saw them talking once, but not at most of the negotiations and the consultations. And then we know some countries have expressed disappointment with China's newly released NDC, NDC 3.0. So NDC basically stands for Nationally Determined Contribution, which essentially means the target a country sets for itself to reduce future greenhouse gas emissions. And critics say that China's new NDC isn't ambitious enough to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. And what's your take on that?

[Deborah Seligson]

So I think there are multiple different kinds of leadership. And the kind of leadership that the Chinese were interested in asserting was leadership on the technology side on implementing cleantech, both wind and Solar, and their EV programs, their high speed rail, etc. They wanted to show off all of their development programs. There were lots of programs at the China Pavilion where different local leaders were talking about sort of green urbanization or what grasslands restoration or whatever else they're doing. So they're very interested in showing sort of leadership by example in the policy space. They're not at all interested in leadership in the negotiation space. Right. They'll agree to what they like, they will disagree with what they don't like. But to actually be a leader in the negotiation space, you would need to be able to propose solutions to difficult, you know, disagreements among parties. And when you do that, some people will like those compromises and some people won't. And you're probably going to get labeled fossil of the day sometimes because you're offering a compromise. And the Chinese very much don't want that. They don't want to stick out in that way. They want to be perceived as a team player rather than a leader leader in that sense. And I think there was a lot of frustration with that at the COP because the U. S was missing and because the Europeans structurally have such a problem being a leader, because they have to first come to a consensus among all their member states and they really don't have a strong spokesman for the entire group. So it becomes very complicated for that.

And so there is a leadership gap which the Brazilian presidency was very much trying to step in and be that leader. And I do think they worked overtime to make that happen, including bringing President Lula back on the last Wednesday of the COP to try to wrangle people, et cetera. But it's hard to be both kind of the participant leader and the president of the thing because you're supposed to be impartial to all the inputs, et cetera, et cetera. So I think, you know, it was interesting to me that people really did seem to miss the US Even though we're such an unreliable partner in this process. But typically, at least during Democratic administration.

The US has been.

Willing to speak up and offer solutions. And that seemed to be, you know, something that was a bit missing this year. You know, it'll be interesting to see now, in terms of the NDC, yeah, the Chinese NDC is pretty modest. A 7 to 10% reduction.

In 2035 is not going to be hard for the Chinese to meet at 30% renewables in their energy mix. Again, at the rate that solar's increasing at the moment, they should easily exceed it. They like to exceed their targets and so they probably will. The challenge is people want them to put in a tough enough target that other countries feel pressured to also speak up with more ambition. And other countries don't necessarily tend to exceed their targets all the time. That's kind of the Chinese approach. So again, stretch target for China would have been more of a leadership position rather than just a team player position.

[Isa Ding]

This is so interesting. You have written about this and I think this is kind of my big takeaway from this cop or one of my biggest takeaways from this cop, which I knew earlier. But it was really interesting to also see that in action, sort of, which is that again, I think a lot of people in the west, they don't understand that China, at least in this space, does not like to pledge a lot and then have all the international media criticize it when it fails to deliver. And at least in the climate, environmental space, China always outperforms its pledges because I mean, if I were China, I.

[Kaiser Kuo]

Would be doing the same thing.

[Isa Ding]

Why would I over pledge and then.

Get all the criticisms when I have trouble fulfilling that? And so at a personal level, I thought this is actually the more ethical approach at the country level. Right, so you are even at the individual level, we always say that we don't want to promise and then deliver. It's better to just say nothing and then do it anyway. But I think what you just said made a lot of sense because if China doesn't make pledge ambitiously, then other countries will not make an ambitious pledge and then they might not. So that could basically means collectively we're setting lower ambitions. But do you think this could be made up with all the developments in the renewables and could China and other countries basically all start to over deliver in this space? And I think this is really this big difference between talking and doing that I see at least in climate change between different countries.

[Deborah Seligson]

So I don't know. In terms of other countries, I mean, I'm pretty confident of where China's going. A lot in other countries will depend on availability of investment, investment dollars, which is why these finance discussions at the comp are so important. But I think the other thing is that China's stances at the comp have always lagged a little bit behind where they really are situated in terms of sort of the world's hierarchy of development or something. So you know, they were continuing to ask for tech transfer and seem to continue to be asking for finance after they clearly weren't in need of tech transfer and weren't likely to get finance. They've now recognized that, and that isn't what they're asking for anymore. But they certainly aren't offering tech transfer, for example, and they prefer to do their finance bilaterally rather than within the multilateral system. They still, as I said, are reluctant to sort of be a leader in the negotiations. And at this point as the world's largest emitter and their emissions as a percentage of world emissions are now pretty much double the United States. So I realize they're more populous on a per capita basis, we're still worse. But they're just huge and the solution involves them in every single way. And so I do think there's going to have to be a transformation in terms of the way they approach these negotiations and the way they approach leadership.

And I think it'll happen.

It just tends to lag where other countries expectations of China are.

[Isa Ding]

Well, Deb, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts and thank you for and to our friends at Tsinghua for spending this memorable coffee with me, for sharing your thoughts and experiences with my students and now with the listeners of Seneca and with the world. I always love spending time with you dad, because I myself have a tendency to drift into cynicism when it comes to world affairs and your positivity, your believing progress, always rubs off on me. I always say that you're the opposite of a Debbie Downer. You're a Debbie Upper in this treacherous political space we all operate in. I just wish I had your energy and your drive and I am so grateful we have you in our community of scholars.

[Deborah Seligson]

Well, thank you so much Iza.

[Kaiser Kuo]

You've been listening to the cynical podcast. The show was produced, engineered, edited and mastered by me, Kaiser Guo, recorded this week of course course by Isa Ding and her guest Deborah Seligson. Support the show through [e-mail] where there is a growing offering of terrific original China related writing and audio. Email [e-mail] if you've got ideas on how you can help out with the show. Don't forget to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Enormous gratitude to the University of Wisconsin, Madison's center for East Asian studies for supporting the show this year.

[Isa Ding]

Year.

[Kaiser Kuo]

Huge thanks to my guest host, Isa Ding and to her fantastic guest Deborah Seligson. Extra special thanks to EZA for suggesting to me a new way to go after people who talk too often about over capacity. We're going to call it glut shaming from now on. And the New York Times has done far too much glut shaming of China. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.

[Isa Ding]

Take care, Sam.