China has halted bilateral talks on climate change with the United States and cast doubt on whether the world can rally enough ambition to address global warming in time to prevent its worst effects.
The two superpowers and the two biggest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions have cooperated on climate change.
China has suspended talks on the issue less than 100 days before the next landmark international climate summit, COP 27, as part of its escalating retaliation over US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan.
John Kerry, the former US Secretary of State, is currently the Biden administration's top climate diplomat, said that no country should withhold progress on existential transnational issues because of bilateral differences.
Suspending cooperation doesn't punish the United States, it punishes the world, particularly the developing world, he said.
Over the last few years, climate change has remained an open avenue for cooperation between the United States and China, even as tensions have escalated on other issues like human rights, forced labor, Hong Kong and Taiwan sovereignty, and trade.
In the lead-up to the COP 27 UN climate summit, which takes place in Egypt in November, U.S. and Chinese officials had started to increase engagement on climate issues.
Pelosi's visit to self-ruled Taiwan this week, which China claims as its own, infuriated Beijing and triggered Chinese military drills on an unprecedented scale in the seas and air around the island.