Utah Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert listens as China scholar Susan Shirk, of the University of California, San Diego, talks to the assembled governors at the Western Governors' Conference about China's energy technology and the environment. (Paul Fraughton / The Salt Lake Tribune)

Park City » The United States will have to dance a delicate diplomatic waltz to work toward an agreement with China to tackle climate change, but the cooperation of the world's leading greenhouse gas emitters will be crucial, experts said Tuesday.

"The leaders of China and the United States hold the fate of the planet in their hands," said Susan Shirk, director of the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at the University of California, San Diego.

It will fall in large part to Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., who has been tapped as President Barack Obama's ambassador to China, to help navigate the waters, although Huntsman was in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, prepping for upcoming confirmation hearings.

"I'm very excited about his becoming our man in Beijing, and I know he'll do a great job of representing American interests there," Shirk said.

Shirk, speaking in the closing session of the Western Governors Association meeting at Deer Valley, said China is realizing that the Obama administration is serious about climate change and trying to figure out how to respond.

Eric Heitz, president of the Energy Foundation, which aims to develop renewable energy in the United States and China, said there is a myth that China refuses to commit to clean energy as it expands its booming economy, which Congress uses to justify inaction by the United States.

In fact, Heitz said, China has aimed

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to reduce its energy intensity by 20 percent by next year and to have 15 percent of its energy come from renewable sources by 2020. It's ranked second in the world in its renewable investment and may surpass the United States this year, and is the world's largest producer of solar cells.

China's fuel efficiency standards for cars are considerably more stringent than the United States', an effort, said Heitz, to make China a leader in producing new battery-powered and green cars.

"The way forward with China is about understanding what is in their domestic interest," Heitz said, using that domestic interest to advance climate-friendly practices.

Utah Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert said the United States is a leader in reducing pollution and, given that China has four times as many people, "all things being equal, China should be reducing by about four times more."

China recently passed the United States as the global leader in greenhouse-gas emissions, but its per capita emissions are about one-fifth of that in the United States.

Obama is expected to visit China for talks in November, and there is a major global climate conference scheduled in Denmark in December. But Shirk said those deadlines may be too tight to strike a climate deal, since Congress still has not acted on U.S. climate legislation.

"China won't even talk about committing to a national target until they see what the U.S. is going to do," she said.