In December, representatives from nearly 200 nations will gather in Copenhagen to negotiate a possible global agreement for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. As these meetings draw near, many in the international community are looking to China and the United Sates, the world’s biggest carbon emitters, to help set the agenda for global climate efforts.

In this video interview, Kenneth Lieberthal, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of its John L. Thornton China Center, paints a portrait of the path toward Copenhagen and addresses the difficult questions both China and the United States must face in the coming months. He also outlines the scope of opportunities that cooperation on clean-energy development could create, the remaining roadblocks to compromise, and his hypothesis that a clean-energy partnership will emerge between the two countries before December.

Tom Kiely, a member of the editorial board of McKinsey’s publishing group, spoke with Lieberthal in June 2009 at the Brookings Institution, in Washington, DC. Watch the video or read the transcript below.