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Burning Issue: Do the G8 summit meetings achieve anything worthwhile?

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Published Date: 08 July 2008
Yes

JUDITH ROBERTSON, Head of Oxfam Scotland
IT IS easy to be cynical about the G8 summit. Every year we hear talk of "empty promises" and an "expensive talking shop". So why is it that organisations such as Oxfam consider the annual meeting of G8 leaders to be one of the most important campaig...



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  • Last Updated: 07 July 2008 10:08 PM
  • Source: The Scotsman
  • Location: Edinburgh
  • Related Topics: The G8
 
1

M.Corleone,

2nd Vatican State.... Coatbridge 08/07/2008 16:56:21
Hey Jude....ith,
Maybe it's just me but you seem to defeat your own argument there babe. The last line about the G8 leaders "have the means" effectively confirms that they haven't.
2

11+failed,

the pans 10/07/2008 09:33:01
For a perfect example of what is meant by "gesture politics" - an empty pledge given solely for effect, which the politician has no hope of honouring - one could not do better than this week's commitment by the G8 leaders on how they want us to fight climate change.
Sitting on their cloud-wreathed Japanese mountain top, they solemnly agreed that, to halt global warming, their countries would aim by 2050 to halve their emissions of carbon dioxide.
If the G8's leaders genuinely wanted to cut carbon emissions by 50 per cent over the next 40 years, this would mean taking steps they haven't even begun to contemplate
A tiny indication of the fact that they didn't really have a clue what they were talking about was a slip by Japan's prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda, when he had to be corrected for announcing that the CO2 cut would be measured from "1990 levels".
Even when he amended this to "present-day levels", he was merely spouting empty words into the oriental air.
Three things make this aspiration by the leaders of the world's "eight richest countries" not just vainglorious grandstanding, but positively dangerous.
The first is that, as well as having no idea how they could achieve such an absurdly ambitious target, they may inflict immeasurable damage on their economies just by trying to do so.
One after another, it is becoming clear that all the costly measures so far proposed to cut carbon emissions are pie-in-the-sky.
3

The Former Mr. Angry,

Perth 09/07/2009 23:22:12
Despite the main protagonaists for not quite getting to 50% ie. the largest polluters China and India still being rather weak on promises Broon declares magnificently that we have have set the 80% and 2 deg Celsius targets and that this is a "historic" agreement. Yes, it became history as soon as it was uttered but not in the sense he meant it. He seems to confuse declarations with actual activity.

If any of the G8 had been really keen on wrecking their economy like Broon they could have agreed to some rather more specific targets closer to now which would demand action. They haven't and will do nothing. Broon will try to and in the process try to hose out more money to look good but he has none left so will look like the utter incompetent that he is.

 

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