Environment leaders sounded alarms Tuesday over the widening rift amongst the U.S. and China, warning that a lack of cooperation could worsen the coronavirus pandemic, sluggish a global economic recovery or even lead to outright conflict.

“We should do anything to keep away from a new Cold War,” United Nations Secretary-Basic António Guterres claimed in opening the once-a-year U.N. Basic Assembly conference in New York. “A technological and economic divide challenges inevitably turning into a geostrategic and military services divide.”

Chinese…