"The incoming Biden administration will be the first ever to allow a 'climate envoy' to serve on the National Security Council. The man tapped for the job, John Kerry, has been hailed as "a long-time climate champion" with vast foreign policy experience to boot given he was formerly Obama's secretary of state.
"Though it remains hotly contested and disputed the extent to which climate change is a matter of national security, the two things will now be bound up, and even more so given the US and China are widely considered as the world's two top polluters, and given Sino-US relations are at an all-time low within these last weeks of the Trump presidency.
"A lengthy essay in South China Morning Post explores the prospects of Biden getting "tough" on China in the area of combatting climate change with Kerry running point. "The prospect of a return to a joint effort by the world’s top two polluters to combat the climate crisis has set off alarm bells among some political circles in the US, amid a hardening of attitudes towards Beijing," SCMP Beijing Bureau Chief Jane Cai along with co-author Owen Churchill write.
"Specifically they cite the foremost example of Republican Congressional hawk Tom Cotton, who fears steep reversals of Trump's pressure campaign on Beijing in the name of "smooth relations" based on nebulous "commitments" on climate change.
"Weeks ago Cotton said on Twitter that Biden is surrounding himself with "panda huggers" who will ultimately be "soft" on China, before adding:
"John Kerry will jet off to Beijing in pursuit of a climate accord with the world’s biggest polluter, the Chinese Communist Party. If Xi Jinping plays along, he’ll demand concessions. And we know what that means: more shuttered factories in the U.S., more hot air from Beijing." . . .
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