No, the Chinese did not invent the concept of global warming and climate change is very much real, a spokesperson from Beijing said Wednesday, Nov. 16.
Liu Zhenmin, the Vice Foreign Minister of China, refuted President-elect Donald Trump's previous claims that China created the concept of global warming to harm competition in the United States and make it more non-competitive.
In 2012, the president-elect tweeted:
The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Nov. 6, 2012
During the campaign season, Trump called his 2012 tweet a joke after Sen. Bernie Sanders pointed it out.
But Trump also added that the tweet was "done for the benefit of China" because the East Asian country supposedly wasn't doing anything to help against climate change.
However, his 2012 tweet wasn't the only post revealing his anti-climate change commentary.
In January 2014, Trump specifically posted the following:
NBC News just called it the great freeze - coldest weather in years. Is our country still spending money on the GLOBAL WARMING HOAX? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Jan. 25, 2014
Climate Change Is Not A Hoax
According to Liu, Trump's allegations couldn't be true because climate change negotiations were actually initiated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change during President Ronald Reagan's and President George H.W. Bush's administrations in the late 1980s.
In fact, both Reagan and Bush had supported the IPCC in pushing for global warming talks even before Beijing knew that negotiations were emerging, said Liu.
Reagan passed away in 2004, but former State Secretary George Schulz, who served under Reagan's term, has become one of the most famous Republicans speaking out about climate change and pushing for urgent action.
"The potential results are catastrophic," Schulz told Bloomberg during a 2014 interview.
Liu said increased efforts to curb carbon emissions in the United States could actually boost the country's competitiveness, particularly through the investment in cleaner technologies and manufacturing.
Concerns have emerged that a Trump presidency would change the course set by incumbent President Barack Obama on climate change and completely scrap his policies in accordance with the Paris agreement.
However, Jonathan Pershing, an official envoy to the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Morocco said Tuesday that the international deal is strong enough to resist the impacts of Trump's presidency.
"[I] am confident that we can and we will sustain a durable international effort to counter climate change," added Pershing.
