Pelosi: U.S. Must Work with China on ‘Overriding’ Climate Issue Despite Uyghur ‘Genocide’

In a moderated conversation Thursday ahead of the G7 Speakers’ meeting in London, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged international cooperation with China to curb climate change while acknowledging the regime’s perpetration of “genocide” in the Xinjiang region and “suppression of democracy” in Hong Kong.

“With their military aggression in the South China sea, with their continuation of genocide in Xinjiang province, with their violation of cultural, linguistic, religious priority of Tibet, with their suppression of democracy in Hong Kong, and other parts of China as well…,” Pelosi said, referencing Beijing’s authoritarian record of oppressing minorities and forcefully silencing dissent.

China has been accused of committing a genocide against the Uyghur Muslim minority in the Xinjiang region, with researchers uncovering concentration camps on satellite images. Survivors have reported the systematic forced sterilization of Uyghur women as part of a campaign to reduce the birthrate of minority populations in China’s remote western provinces.

Despite those atrocities, Pelosi said the U.S. must collaborate with China on the climate crisis, stipulating that she’s considered “one of the most unpopular Americans in China.”

“Having said all of that…we have to work together on climate. Climate is an overriding issue and China is the leading emitter in the world, the U.S. too and developed world too, but we must work together. So we have to have a level of communication, whether its COVID, whether its terrorism, or whether its climate…,” she added.

Former President Trump said that part of his justification for withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Accords was that the agreement placed a disproportionate economic burden on the U.S. while doing little to ensure that China, the world’s worst polluter, would comply with emissions standards. While China’s leader, Xi Jinping, promises that his nation’s carbon emissions will start to decrease by 2030, they are growing at the fastest pace in more than a decade, according to the Climate Brief.

As the United States gradually becomes less dependent on coal for energy production, switching to alternatives such as natural gas, carbon emissions have fallen.

In 2007, the U.S. generated 6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, while that amount was only 4.5 billion metric tons last year. By contrast, China generated an estimated 14.4 billion metric tons in 2020.