http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/03/19/us-pressures-g20-dropping-climate-reference-joint-statement
Published on Sunday, March 19, 2017
by Common Dreams
US Pressures G20 Into Dropping Climate Reference from Joint Statement
'Climate change is out for the time being,' said one anonymous German
official
by Nadia Prupis, staff writer
Finance ministers for the Group of 20 (G20), which comprises the world's
biggest economies, dropped a joint statement mentioning funding for the
fight against climate change after pressure from the United States and
Saudi Arabia.
A G20 official taking part in the annual meeting told Reuters that
efforts by this year's German leadership to keep climate funding in the
statement had hit a wall.
"Climate change is out for the time being," said the official, who asked
to remain anonymous.
French Finance Minister Michel Sapin stressed that the move did not mark
the end of the road for the statement. The G20 is scheduled to meet in
full in July in Hamburg.
"There can be a way to overcome disagreements today—that is, not writing
about it in the communique," Sapin told reporters on Friday. "But not
writing about it doesn't mean not talking about it. Not writing about it
means that there are difficulties, that there is a disagreement and that
we we must work on them in the coming months."
The statement does mention the need to phase out fossil fuel subsidies,
but overall the language appears weaker than previous communiques,
critics said.
Bloomberg reported:
The 23-page draft, obtained by Bloomberg News, outlines how the
most prosperous nations can lead by example, cutting their own
greenhouse-gas emissions, financing efforts to curb pollution in poorer
countries and take other steps to support the landmark Paris climate
accord.
"The link between global warming and the organization of financial
markets and even the organization of the global economy" is particularly
important for France, Sapin said in Baden-Baden. "We'll see whether
there'll be agreement with the U.S. administration, but there can be no
going back on this for the G-20."
At the last G20 meeting in July 2016, the group's financial leaders
urged all countries that had signed onto the landmark Paris climate
accord to bring the deal into action as soon as possible. But President
Donald Trump, who has referred to global warming as a "Chinese hoax,"
took office vowing to remove the U.S. from the voluntary agreement.
On Thursday, a day before the finance meeting, the Trump administration
unveiled its "skinny budget" proposal, which included a 31 percent cut
to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
As Friends of the Earth senior political strategist Ben Schreiber said
at the time, "With this budget, Trump has made it clear that he is
prioritizing Big Oil profits over the health of the American people."