July 8th, 2009
G-8 not so great?
Didn’t the “G” in G-7, then G-8, once stand for “great?” Well, the G-8 leaders today took a great step forward on global warming. But so what? They didn’t include some of the key national economies, like China and India which control a major fraction of the world’s population. Nor Indonesia or Brazil or South Africa or Mexico or…
What the not-so-great G-8 did agree on: some targets for controlling greenhouse gas emissions in the future. First time for that because the U.S. had refused any international standards under the previous regime in Washington. The current Kyoto Protocol was rejected by both of the world’s two top CO2 polluters. That being China and the U.S.
The G-8’s noble, explicit target: keep the world’s average temp from rising more than two degrees centigrade. Those are slightly fatter degrees than the temp commonly used in America, Fahrenheit. So that would be about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
How overtly silly is the G-8? It has four members that are also members of the European Union, which has evolved to become essentially a single regional economy. Those members are Britain, France, Germany and Italy. So maybe it’s really the not-so-G-5?
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A newsman since 1969, Harry Fuller has worked for CBS, ABC, CNBC Europe, CNET and was founding news director at TechTV. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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