G20 Summit & Forgotten Climate

A few weeks ago, I said, in this popular newspaper, the current global climate is not good, and our children will not be proud of what we are going to leave behind.

Our generation will bear a great responsibility before God and history for what is happening and will happen in the near future.

Neither international conferences, nor summits have succeeded so far in fighting climate changes, which have become more catastrophic and rapid than ever. Credible publications, the activities of global civil society, and the repeated cries of international organizations such as the United Nations could not handle the matter either.

In a recent UN report, experts noted that these changes will continue their upward trend in the future by increasing the frequency of such extreme weather and climatic phenomena, adding that some phenomena will remain unsolvable forever.

I hope I could be wrong in my pessimism but it is the truth that was confirmed by the outcomes of the G20 meeting in Rome.

Everyone was expecting clear, reasonable, and adequate answers from these industrialized and most polluting countries regarding the issue of climate, especially since the group is gathering at the opening of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing due to the continued burning of more fuels that pollute the environment making the matter worse.

Also, the persity of different industrial human activities, especially those related to the production of electric power from fossil fuels or those related to heavy industries such as iron, steel, cement, etc. play a vital role in climate change.

The reader may be surprised when you know that various means of transportation are also a reason for climate change as one car releases an average of around one hundred tons of gas during its lifespan.

In the G20 Summit, the world’s 20 leaders endorsed an OECD deal on a global minimum corporate tax of 15%. The 130 countries and jurisdictions, representing more than 90% of global GDP, signed an OECD-brokered agreement to impose fairer taxation on multinational corporations.

However, I believe that this does not fulfill the fateful requirements of the people.  Instead of delving into real problems to find radical solutions to them, the industrialized countries address the secondary issues that could be adopted by other international organizations.

The bombshell is that these problems, especially climatic ones, are caused by those industrialized countries. They include developed countries such as the United States, members of the European Union, in addition to large emerging economies such as China, Russia, Brazil, and India, which account for 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Clearly, human activities cause all these calamities, which made UN Secretary-General António Guterres stress that the latest scientific report on climate change was "a thundering wake-up call" and "the climate crisis is a code red for humanity.”

Unfortunately, the most polluting industrial countries such as America and China think only of their immediate industrial and economic interests and do not think about the fate of their children or future generations. They claim in their international output that they are taking measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the world.

A few days ago, U.S. Democrats published a memo, which revealed that oil groups spend only a small part of their campaigns on climate change, despite alleging that they consider this issue a priority.

The parliamentarians met during a session of the US Congress with representatives of the giant oil groups and accused them of seeking to hide the negative effects of their activities on the climate, wondering how seriously they are in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

In the major industrial countries, there is an overlap of economic and industrial interests with political decision-makers, which stops all government policies related to addressing climate change. The world maybe will pay attention to climate policies only when the interests of our land and the real interests of human beings are stronger.