Ed’s note: The G20 meeting was a bust

In other news, water is wet… On a more serious note, did anyone actually think that we would have a consensus last weekend? After all, Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the UN, tweeted just at the beginning of the G20 meeting that ‘The climate crisis is here – and no country or region is immune’ in an effort to highlight the importance of the situation. An effort that apparently went unnoticed. Now, why exactly was the meeting a bust? Because the G20 ministers could not agree on the wording of key climate change commitments. Cute!

Therefore, the whole discussion will restart in a few months, at the end of October in Rome, just one day before COP26 begins in Glasgow. It seems like not everybody agrees with the Secretary-General of the UN, who said that the world “urgently needs a clear and unambiguous commitment to the 1.5 goal of the Paris Agreement from all G20 nations.”

Scientists have warned that the problem can be spotted in the ‘disastrous’ energy policies of China, Russia, Brazil and Australia, which could stoke a 5°C rise in temperatures if adopted by the rest of the world. These countries are the ones reluctant to reduce their emissions and explore more aggressively a fossil fuel-free future.