UNITED NATIONS, United States, Sept 23, 2021 (BSS/AFP) - The United States
and Britain on Wednesday welcomed China's promise to end funding for coal
projects overseas, but voiced hope the world's largest emitter would also do
more at home on climate change.

  President Xi Jinping told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday that China
will stop backing coal overseas, all but drying up the world's foreign
assistance to the dirty form of energy in developing countries after similar
announcements by South Korea and Japan.

  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, seeking to rally international
support for strong climate action ahead of UN climate talks in Glasgow in
November, voiced hope for a complete global end to coal by 2040.

  "I thank President Xi for what he has done to end China's international
financing of coal and I hope China will now go further and phase out the
domestic use of coal as well," Johnson told the General Assembly.

  "Because the experience of the UK shows it can be done.

  Despite China's pledge on overseas assistance, it has kept investing at
home in coal -- an issue raised on a visit earlier this month by US climate
envoy John Kerry.

  A US official said of Xi's move: "We welcome this announcement but we also
recognize that more needs to be done."

  "We look forward to hearing more about the additional steps that they can
take in this decisive decade to further reduce their national emissions," the
official told reporters on customary condition of anonymity.

  The official said that further Chinese action would "help put the world
more closely on a trajectory that will hold temperatures from rising to well
above 1.5 degrees," as appears increasingly likely despite an aspiration set
by the 2015 Paris accord.

  UN scientists say that warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit)
above pre-industrial levels is a threshold at which the planet can avoid the
worst ravages of climate change including increasingly severe weather,
droughts and flooding.

  President Joe Biden has put a high priority on the environment after
defeating the climate skeptic Donald Trump and in his own UN speech Tuesday
vowed to double US aid for countries hardest hit by climate change, a key gap
ahead of the Glasgow talks.