America’s leading climate change negotiator will urge China to make a commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions during meetings in Beijing this week, as the US seeks to avoid the collapse of the next global warming treaty.

Todd Stern and a number of the Obama Administration’s senior climate experts travelling with him are intent on boosting co-operation between the US and China to convince developing countries to back a new global climate treaty due to be approved in Copenhagen in December. More than 180 nations are working to endorse a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

Mr Stern travelled to Beijing with the White House science adviser John Holdren and David Sandalow, the Assistant Energy Secretary. Last week Mr Stern said that he did not expect a written agreement from the trip, but he wanted the visit to help to set the tone with the developing world.

Together, China and the US are responsible for 40 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. China’s contribution has skyrocketed in the past two decades and is expected to be twice that of the US by 2030.

During a visit to China last month, John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that “Copenhagen will be defined by what the US and China agree on in the next few weeks”.

China has avoided setting targets or timetables for limiting emissions, but it has some of the most stringent vehicle emission standards in the world and is investing heavily in alternative and renewable energy sources. In the past decade, it has become the world’s largest generator of wind energy. The US Congress is looking at legislation to cut emissions by 17 per cent, from 2005 levels, by 2020 — but Mr Stern said that such action by the US would be futile without firm commitments from China.

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