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The US-China Rift Moves Climate Politics Into an Era of Competition

With the US playing catchup to China's enormous spending on clean energy, maybe climate rivalry can be a good thing.

Joe Biden meets with Xi Jinping during a virtual summit in the White House in Washington, DC, in 2021.

Joe Biden meets with Xi Jinping during a virtual summit in the White House in Washington, DC, in 2021.

Photographer: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

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This month's biggest climate milestones happened over one weekend. On Sunday, the US Senate approved hundreds of billions of dollars in climate and clean-energy spending. Just two days before, climate cooperation between the US and China — the world’s largest economies and emitters — came to an abrupt halt.