The totally useless G-8 Summit
The annual ritual referred to as the G-8 summit was held this year in Japan based on an established rotation. The members of this elite group are the heads of states from eight industrialized nations, namely, the United States of America, Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Russia. This annual event began in the mid seventies when six industrialized nations tried to solve issues of mutual concerns. Canada and Russia became members of this group in later years. These eight nations currently represent about 875 million people, or 13 percent of the world’s population.
At this year’s summit, global warming was one of the major topics of debate and - to state it in brief - they agreed to set targets for reducing by half the emissions of green-house gases, in and of itself a very noble goal. However, the target date is 2050! Yes, 42 years from now. This was reportedly part of a United Nations effort to negotiate a new climate pact at the end of 2009 since the so-called ‘Kyoto Protocol’ expires in a few years. Most of the G-8 summit member countries had signed onto this but not the United States. President Bush has been criticized for this but he stated his opposition quite early that it would not be fair to the U.S. economy to comply with Kyoto while the developing nations would get a free pass on the targeted goals of this agreement.
The summit also invited leaders of many developing countries such as China, India and many others representing more than half the planet’s population. These countries were asked to sign onto this new target date but after some discussions, they declined based on their own economic developments. This should not be a surprise since their priorities are internal and while they will give lip service to global warming and climate change concerns, they seriously do not consider it a major problem for themselves since they are in a developing, economy expanding status.
And so the summit ended with an agreement that is totally useless and definitely meaningless for a number of reasons. First and foremost remains the fact that the current leaders will not be around in 2050, President Bush would be 104 years old and while we wish him a long life, we doubt very much that he will be influential in reaching this lofty goal. The same goes for all the other Presidents, Prime Ministers and Chancellor. That is why we consider it such a farce for these individuals to meet and sound off on something where they have absolutely no control over any aspect of possibly achieving it.
To prove this point, Common Sense Politics likes to present an example: Let’s say, there is a street with 33 homes and 5 of the families decide to rid the neighborhood of snails with the goal of doing so in the next 20 to 30 years. What chance of success do you believe they have? We think the answer lies between nil, zip, nada and zero. In twenty to thirty years, in all likelihood, half of the neighbors have moved somewhere else, a vast majority of the neighbors will from the beginning never even participate in this snail eradication program and the new neighbors will likely not feel too strong about this since it was agreed upon by some before they even became neighbors. In short, a totally useless undertaking and flawed in concept and content from the beginning.
To us here at Common Sense Politics, the G-8 summit was in and of itself equally useless when it comes to addressing the topic of climate change or global warming. One would think that they had more pressing things to discuss and decide on while they were meeting and feasting on caviar and other culinary delights and specialties. Don’t they feel somewhat silly coming away from their conference and proclaiming victory in their quest to conquer global warming? Apparently not! It reminds us of an often heard and very common comment by participants of large conferences and meetings in a corporate/office environment where nothing of substance was achieved or agreed upon, this comment was “It was a good meeting.” And many of them felt good about it and were proud of themselves.