Transcript
LAEL BRAINARD: As everybody in this room knows, in the last two decades, China has outperformed every previous growth record and in the last 10 years alone, tripled its GDP and really brought a record number of people out of poverty. But, of course, with traditional growth paths that China has followed and that the industrial countries followed before it, along with that growth has also come a large environmental cost.
And today, as we all know, China has recently taken on the dubious status of being the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. As we start to think about these things, these are challenges that we in the United States face and will continue to face moving forward, and it is enormously in our interest here in the United States to work collaboratively with China as it grapples with many of the same challenges. We saw perhaps the most graphic example of this -- or at least for many people around the world who hadn't really thought much about it -- the Beijing Olympics was a moment in time where people sort of realized that just to clear the air for the Olympics cost by some estimates over $10 billion. And I think that was a kind of wake-up call.
And so as we all grapple with the planetary emergency of dealing with climate change, what's the right way for us to share the burden? What's the way for us to best collaborate on technologies that are going to chart a new development path, a new growth path that is less carbon and pollution intensive?
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