Wiggle Words on Climate Change

The G7 summit wrapped up in Cornwall earier this week, with the leaders professing the need for action on climate change. But their statement, when looked at closely, is just smoke and mirrors, signifying nothing, as Shakespeare so aptly put it four hundred years ago. It's full of wiggle words, letting them claim progress when nothing significant is happening.

The G7 chose [checks notes] almost none of them. Instead, there were commitments to “reaffirm” hewing to the Paris Agreement, “rapidly scale-up technologies and policies that further accelerate the transition away from unabated coal capacity,” and acknowledge that decarbonizing transportation “will require dramatically increasing the pace of the global decarbonization of the road transport sector throughout the 2020s.” Notice the lack of percentages, timelines, dollar amounts, or anything resembling concrete steps. Admittedly, the G7 communique is but one document and each country’s commitment to the Paris Agreement has more details as do national budgets and other policy documents. But those details do not include, for example, when fossil fuel subsidies or exploration will end, something basically every available line of research has indicated needs to happen to avoid a climate meltdown.