YOU WOULDN'T know it by the intense focus on health-care reform and on race over the past two weeks, but during about that same period Washington and Beijing made strides to bridge their divide over reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Just last week, China and the United States signed a memorandum of understanding that commits them "to respond vigorously to the challenges of energy security, climate change and environmental protection through ambitious domestic action and international cooperation." That might sound like feel-good diplo-speak, especially when there's a dearth of details in the rest of the memorandum. But when you consider where relations had been before, the events of the past two weeks have been promising.
The increased activity is happening in the looming shadow of the upcoming December talks in Copenhagen on a successor to the 1999 Kyoto Protocol. Both the United States and China have made assurances that they are not crafting an agreement separate from the final global climate accord. But because together the two nations account for 42 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, their discussions will play an enormous role in the success or failure of Copenhagen.
This is a far cry from what happened under President George W. Bush. After spending most of his eight years questioning the science buttressing predictions of catastrophic climate change, Mr. Bush created the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF). Nevertheless, there wasn't much progress -- so much so that the Chinese government took to leaking its frustration to its compliant press.
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