U.S. special climate envoy John Kerry urged Chinese leaders to reach for the "highest ambition" in order to curb temperature rises, saying the climate crisis was not about politics, he told reporters late on Thursday.
Senior Chinese diplomats warned Kerry during his visit to China that the issue of climate change could not be separated from the broader political disputes between the two sides.
"My response to them was, look, climate is not ideological, not partisan, and not a geostrategic weapon," Kerry told reporters during a conference call following two days of talks with his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, in the northern city of Tianjin.
He warned that while China was doing a lot to tackle rising levels of greenhouse gas, it was now emitting more than the whole of the OECD, and "can do more".
(Reporting by David Stanway; Editing by Alison Williams)
