India is also poised to join the agreement this year, Deese said, adding that Obama was expected to meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of a Group of 20 nations meeting in Hangzhou, China, this weekend. Unlikely partners on addressing global warming, the USA and China have sought to use their collaboration to ramp up pressure on other countries to take concrete action as well.
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But he says leadership by the USA and China has been one of the biggest drivers of action on the issue, which Obama has highlighted during his presidency.
President Barack Obama says a decision by the USA and China to formally join a landmark climate agreement may be seen as “the moment that we finally chose to save our planet”.
If the deal clears the final hurdles, he said, “we’ll have a truly global climate agreement that will bind the two biggest emitters in the world”. The announcement means the accord could take force by the end of the year, a faster than anticipated timeline.
World leaders have begun arriving in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou ahead of this year’s G20 summit.
Obama said that their discussions Saturday would cover the breadth of the U.S.
Asked on Saturday about the Paris Agreement, Trudeau told reporters in Hangzhou that work toward ratification remains a “hot item” on the Liberal government’s agenda.
While there have been recent concessions that not everyone wins out of globalisation – US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew this week spoke of anxious and angry people who felt left behind – the White House has also signalled a renewed push on the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal as President Barack Obama’s term winds down.
The US President made the infamous warning earlier this year as he urged Britons not to leave the European Union. A Chinese official kept reporters and some top White House aides away from the president, prompting a US official to intervene.
Theresa May is heading to China for her first major global summit as Prime Minister, but faces a row with her hosts over the Hinkley Point nuclear power station project. The nations that have joined must also produce at least 55 percent of global emissions.
The ceremony opened what is likely Obama’s valedictory tour in Asia.
“Leaders from the world’s most important 20 countries are coming for this big summit, and we all need to guarantee security for foreigners”.
The South China Sea has become a particularly sensitive issue since an worldwide arbitration panel in the Hague in June ruled against China’s claims to nearly the entire crucial water body, in a case brought by fellow claimant the Philippines.
Chinese President Xi Jinping condemned the July 15 defeated coup in Turkey in a meeting with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday, according to Turkish presidential sources.
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Last week, China’s top diplomat called on Japan to be “constructive” at G20, with the deeper fear in Beijing that Japan is angling to become involved in the South China Sea dispute as well, at the behest of its ally the United States.
