President Obama's upcoming trip to China will be crucial in deciding whether he travels to Copenhagen next month to make a case for a global agreement on climate change, Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said today.

"I think his negotiations with President Hu [Jintao] are going to be a central part of his making that decision," Markey told reporters after he delivered remarks during a Council on Foreign Relations conference focusing on the U.N. climate talks. In an interview with Reuters on Monday, Obama signaled his openness to the possibility of a Copenhagen trip: "If I am confident that all of the countries involved are bargaining in good faith and we are on the brink of a meaningful agreement and my presence in Copenhagen will make a difference in tipping us over the edge, then certainly that's something that I will do."

Markey said that in order to combat global climate change, the U.S. must work with China. "We can't solve the problem without partnering with the Chinese," he said. "And so they are going to have to be our fiercest competitors and our strongest allies simultaneously in solving the problem. And we will have to negotiate that balance because there is no other option."

Markey, co-sponsor of the House climate change bill and chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, also said he expects a "major" focus of the discussion between Obama and Hu to be a joint partnership developing carbon capture and sequester technology. "We can create a partnership on research that telescopes the time frame that it will take to find a technological solution to the problem," Markey said. "And it sets up the basis for technology sharing and partnerships in the subsequent years."

The battle between the two countries over renewable energy came to the fore a couple of weeks ago when a consortium of Chinese and American companies announced a joint venture to build a $1.5 billion wind farm in Texas, using turbines made in China. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called on the administration to make sure no U.S. stimulus funds are used to build the farm, which he said would create disproportionately more Chinese jobs than American jobs. A company involved in the project has since announced that no stimulus money will be "directly" funding it. The funding comes primarily from Chinese banks.

The wind farm deal is a "sign that we have to move even more rapidly," Markey said. "We have to take it as a challenge that we are going to develop an indigenous wind industry that can compete internationally. And, if we don't do that, we would have missed an opportunity."

Markey doesn't think partnering with China means more American jobs lost. Quite the opposite, he maintained. "If we don't move more quickly, we're going to lose the jobs anyway.... There should be no confusion," he cautioned, "that these new technologies are going to be deployed in the United States. The only question is who makes them. And so my greatest fear is we sit on our opportunities for such a long period of time that they're not American-developed and deployed."

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