Reuters World News - Can US and China agree on climate as floods and heat wreak global havoc?

Episode Date: July 17, 2023

Dozens are killed in flooding in South Korea, fires rage on the Spanish island of La Palma and millions of Americans are told to stay indoors as soaring heat scorches the West and Southwest. The extreme weather comes as U.S climate envoy John Kerry tries to restart talks on global warming with China. Plus, Russia pulls out of U.N. grains deal after bridge attack, Biden fundraising and space burials. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt-out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, dozens dead in South Korea as a weekend deluge triggers landslides and flooding. America's West wiltz under record heat in the California desert, temperatures hit 128 Fahrenheit. Wildfires rage on the Spanish island of La Palma as southern Europe also swells his, as the U.S. and China try to salvage climate talks in Beijing. It's Monday, July 17th. This is Reuters World News, with everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, every weekday. I'm Kim Vennel in London. We start with breaking headlines from around the world.

Russia has pulled out of a UN grain deal after its only bridge to Crimea was targeted in a drone attack. Moscow accused Ukraine of being behind the blasts that killed at least two people. The UN deal had allowed grand. to be exported through the Black Sea. Supplies of Ukrainian grain have been viewed as essential to helping stave off the worst effects of the global food crisis. You can follow this developing story as it happens on Reuters.com and the Reuters app. Joe Biden is trailing Donald Trump in the fundraising stakes.

The president's re-election campaign had $20 million in the bank at the end of June compared to the 22 million amassed by Trump. The financial disclosures don't include money gathered by Allied super PACs, which typically raise massive sums from wealthy donors. Those figures will be published later in July. There's a new king on Centre Court. Spain's Carlos Alcaraz ended Novak Djokovic's long reign at Wimbledon in a thrilling five-set finale.

The 20-year-old becomes the young. youngest man to win the Challenge Cup since Boris Becker won it at 18. China's economy is having some serious growing pains. It expanded at a slower than expected 6.3% in the second quarter from a year ago. And now investors are wondering if the world's second largest economy will ever be rich. Marius Zaharia is Reuters Deputy Bureau Chief in Hong Kong. Marius, with these really weak growth numbers, is China in. danger of years of Japanese style stagnation?

Comparisons with 1990s Japan made by economists are indeed becoming more frequent because of China's property bubble and because like Japan, China's economies relying heavily on investment at the expense of domestic consumption and its investment in recent years has been generating more debt than growth. Now, lost decades of stagnation is not the consensus expectation for China, but economies do expect the economy. economy to slow down to three to four percent on average over the next decade, which will complicate its ambitions to narrow the gap with the United States. Will China ever be able to break out of that middle income bracket and become rich? One of the interesting facts that economists

point out when they compare China with Japan in the 1990s is that Japan, when it entered its last decades of stagnation in terms of GDP per capita was already above the average of high-income countries, whereas China is just above the middle income point. And therefore, many economists are worrying China about the middle income trap. Very few countries in the world have managed to escape that trap. And many people in economic circles are worried that China will be stuck there for another that's terrible scenes in South Korea as bodies are pulled from a submerged underpass. The death toll is rising with at least 40 people reported dead from days of torrential rain. On the U.S. East Coast, deluges killed at least four people in Pennsylvania.

In the west and southwest, soaring temperatures are the problem. Nearly a quarter of Americans are under warnings for extreme heat. Phoenix, Arizona has already had 17 days in a row with temperatures over 110 degrees Fahrenheit or 43 degrees Celsius. Mike Curran tried cooling down at a park with his son. It is miserable being outside unless you're in the water somehow and it's actually not safe at all. In Death Valley, California park visitor Tom Komita blows a horn. and holds a sign reading,

this is the climate emergency. It's a similar story in Europe where they're bracing for yet another heat wave. This one named after Caron, the ferryman of the dead in Greek mythology. Crispian Balma is in Rome. Crispian, how is it there? The Italian state has issued red top alerts

for 16 Italian cities and that will rise in the next couple of days the hottest places are likely to be the two main islands, Sardinia and Sicily. And there they say in Sardinia, it's possible that the all-time European high, 48.8 Celsius, could fall. And for the Americans, that's 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Right. Rome itself has got a record of 40 degrees Celsius. That is expected to fall on Tuesday.

I appreciate that it's extraordinarily hot across much of America. and when you look at the temperatures of death valley, then obviously Europe is nowhere close to that. But I think probably what a lot of people don't appreciate is just how little air conditioning there is across southern Europe. How are you staying cool? Normally I have keep all the shutters and windows closed, but I've opened them just so you can get a sound maybe of the cicadas. But I suspect that they're not enjoying it very much either. As extreme weather plagues the planet, the US and China this week are trying to revive climate talks. Climate envoy John Kerry is in Beijing for bilateral talks with his Chinese counterpart,

Xi Jinpinghua. Obserers hope it will raise the bar for the world's two largest emitters of greenhouse gases ahead of UN-sponsored climate talks later this year. Valerie Volcovici is covering the talks in China. So, Val, can the world's two biggest polluters put aside their differences to make some progress on this? They believe that they can decouple climate from other issues. There are others who would disagree, particularly around the issues of Chinese solar panels, U.S. tariffs, U.S. competition, and trying to revive domestic manufacturing of the clean energy industry. Some Chinese experts have said that in order to meet global climate goals, you need to be able to have access to China.

solar panels to try to really rapidly bring on these decarbonization goals. But they do believe that they can stay focused on climate. There are areas they feel they can focus on that don't necessarily spill into other tense areas. These areas include tackling methane. China is the largest emitter of methane emissions, climate finance, and deforestation. Away from the hot earth, there's always space. In Houston, Texas, families are watching a nighttime launch of a rocket carrying precious cargo, the DNA or remains of their loved ones.

While space burials are not a new concept, the Houston-based company Celestus is preparing for its first deep space flight, orbiting around the sun indefinitely. Celestus president Colby Youngblood says that's a first. It's going to be the first and only. repository of our civilization out in the universe. No one's done that before. Packages start at around $3,000 for a trip to the atmosphere and back, all the way to $13,000 to voyage into deep space.

Together, plus we love road trips, right? So I guess it would be the ultimate road trip, but we do. Jerry and Elizabeth Paulus, a couple from Arizona, decided to send their own DNA into space in the upcoming Enterprise mission, and they won't be alone. The flight will also house the DNA of some Star Trek stars and a few presidents as well. We've got a hair follicle from George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower, and President John F. Kennedy are all on board that flight as well. That's all we have for today's episode of Reuters World News.

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