China, world’s largest carbon polluting nation, announces new climate
goal to cut emissions
[September 25, 2025]
BY SETH BORENSTEIN and MELINA WALLING
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — With China leading the way by announcing its first
emission cuts, world leaders said Wednesday they are getting more
serious about fighting climate change and the deadly extreme weather
that comes with it.
At the United Nations' high-level climate summit, Chinese president Xi
Jinping announced the world’s largest carbon-polluting country would aim
to cut emissions by 7% to 10% by 2035. China produces more than 31% of
the world's carbon dioxide emissions, and they have long been soaring.
The announcement came as more than 100 world leaders gathered to talk of
increased urgency and the need for stronger efforts to curb the spewing
of heat-trapping gases.
With major international climate negotiations in Brazil 6½ weeks away,
the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres convened a special
leaders summit Wednesday during the General Assembly to focus on
specific plans to curb emissions from coal, oil and natural gas.
After more than six hours of speeches, promises and announcements, about
100 nations — responsible for about two-thirds of the world's emissions
— gave plans or some kind of commitments to further curb fossil fuel
emissions and fight climate change, Deputy Secretary-General Amina J.
Mohammed said.
In a video address, Xi pledged that China would increase its wind and
solar power sixfold from 2020 levels, make pollution-free vehicles
mainstream and “basically establish a climate adaptive society.”
Europe then followed with a less detailed and not quite official new
climate change fighting plan. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the
European Commission, said last week, member states agreed that their
emissions cutting targets would range between 66% and 72%. The EU will
formally submit its plan before the November negotiations.
While the new promises are in the right direction and show stronger
commitment to fighter climate change, “these targets will not be enough
to keep us safe from climate destruction,” said Jake Schmidt, senior
strategic director for international climate at the Natural Resources
Defense Council.
Trump's climate comments challenged
Xi and Brazil’s leader also made statements on Wednesday afternoon that
may have referred to U.S. President Donald Trump’s attacks a day earlier
on renewable energy and the concept of climate change. “While some
countries are acting against it, the international community should stay
focused on the right direction," Xi said.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is hosting the
upcoming climate conference, said, "no one is safe from the effect of
climate change. Walls at borders will not stop droughts or storms,” Lula
said. “Nature does not bow down to bombs or warships. No country stands
above another.”
Said Guterres: “The science demands action. The law commands it. The
economics compel it. And people are calling for it.”
Time to ‘wake up’ amid catastrophes
Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine said she was there to issue “a
demand for us all to wake up from a community whose hospitals and
schools are being destroyed’’ by rising tides. She said she has
regularly been awakened by floods and drought emergencies in her small
island nation and that it will soon be others' turn.
“If we fail to wake up now and end our dependence on fossil fuels the
leaders of every country in this room will be woken up by calls about
catastrophes of wildfires, of storms, of heatwaves, and of starvation
and drought," she said.
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Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, left, attends a climate
summit, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2025, at U.N. headquarters. (AP
Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Pakistani Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif said his country
knows this all too well, with recent floods that have affected 5
million people across over 4,000 villages, killing over 1,000.
“As I speak to you, my country is reeling from intense monsoon
rains, flash floods, mudslides and devastating urban flooding,” he
said. “We are facing this calamity at a time when the scars of the
2022 floods that inflicted losses exceeding $30 billion and
displaced millions are still visible across our land.”
Anthony Albanese, prime minister of Australia, called this a
decisive decade for climate action and said Australians know the
toll of more frequent and extreme weather events like cyclones,
floods, bush fires and droughts. “Australia knows we are not alone,”
he said.
‘Here we must admit failure’
“Warming appears to be accelerating,” climate scientist Johan
Rockstrom said in a science briefing that started the summit. “Here
we must admit failure. Failure to protect peoples and nations from
unmanageable impacts of human-induced climate change.”
“We’re dangerously close to triggering fundamental and irreversible
change,” Rockstrom said.
Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe told leaders that
every tenth of a degree of warming is connected to worsening floods,
wildfires, heat waves, storms and many more deaths: “What’s at stake
is nothing less than everything and everyone we love.”
In a news conference, Lula said he invited both Trump and Xi to the
November climate negotiations, saying it’s important that leaders
listen to scientists.
Under the 2015 Paris climate accord, 195 nations are supposed to
submit new more stringent five-year plans on how to curb carbon
emissions from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.
U.N. officials said countries really need to get their plans in by
the end of the month so the U.N. can calculate how much more warming
Earth is on track for if nations do what they promise. Former U.S.
President Joe Biden submitted America's plan late last year before
leaving office and the Trump administration has distanced itself
from the plan.
Before 2015, the world was on path for 4 degrees Celsius (7.2
degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times, but now
has trimmed that to 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit),
Guterres said.
However, the Paris accord set a goal of limiting warming to 1.5
degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the mid 19th century
and the world has already warmed about 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3
degrees Fahrenheit) since.
Simon Stiell, UN's climate chief, said the Chinese plan "is a clear
signal that the future global economy will run on clean energy. And
that for every country, stronger and faster climate action means
more economic growth, jobs, affordable and secure energy, cleaner
air, and better health, for all of us, everywhere.”
Lula also praised China's announcement, but some advocates were
underwhelmed, but they said China has reputation for under-promising
and over-delivering on climate action.
“China’s latest climate target is too timid given the country’s
extraordinary record on clean energy," said former Colombia
President Juan Manuel Santos, chair of the group The Elders. "China
must go further and faster”
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