G-20 make mild pledges on climate neutrality, coal financing – KIRO 7 News Seattle

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ROME – (AP) – The leaders of the world’s largest economies made vague commitments on Sunday to strive for carbon neutrality “by or around the middle of the century” when they concluded a two-day Rome summit that laid the foundation for the UN Climate Change Conference placed Glasgow, Scotland.

According to the final communiqué, the group of 20 leaders have also agreed to end public funding of coal-fired power abroad, but have not set a target for a coal phase-out domestically – a clear nod to China, India and other coal-dependent countries.

The G-20 represent more than three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions, and the hosts of the summit, Italy and Great Britain, which host the Glasgow Climate Change Conference, had hoped for more ambitious goals for Rome.

Without them, the momentum could be lost for Glasgow, said it was the world’s “last best hope” to anchor commitments to keep temperatures below the critical 1.5 degrees Celsius ((2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the pre-industrial average to keep saying the scientist is necessary.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi told leaders ahead of the final working session on Sunday that they would have to both set long-term goals and make short-term changes to achieve them.

“We need to accelerate the coal phase-out and invest more in renewable energies,” said Draghi. “We also need to make sure that we are careful with the resources available, which means that we should be able to adapt our technologies and our lifestyles to this new world.”

His message was echoed by the British Prince Charles, who warned that “it is literally the last chance saloon”.

“It is impossible to ignore the desperate voices of young people who see you as stewards of the planet, holding the viability of their future in your hands,” said Charles.

According to the communique, the G-20 reiterated past pledges by rich countries to mobilize US $ 100 billion annually to help poorer countries cope with climate change and pledged to increase funding for their adaptation.

A major sticking point remained the deadline for nations to achieve carbon neutrality or “net zero” emissions, ie a balance between greenhouse gases added to and removed from the atmosphere. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wanted every G-20 member to commit to net zero by 2050.

However, prior to the summit, Italy had all but admitted that it would only be able to achieve net zero emissions “by the middle of the century” rather than in any given year.

The final communiqué appeared even weaker as it “recognizes the central importance of achieving net zero global greenhouse gas emissions or carbon neutrality by or around the middle of the century”.

A French official said the unspecific wording reflected the aim of reaffirming a common goal while providing flexibility to address “the diversity of G-20 countries” – particularly China and India, as well as Indonesia.

The US and the European Union have set a deadline for net zero emissions of 2050, while China, Russia and Saudi Arabia are aiming for 2060. The heads of state and government of these three countries did not come to Rome.

“Why do you think 2050 is a magic number?” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asked this at a press conference. “If it is an ambition of the European Union, it is the right of other countries to have ambitions too … Nobody has proven to us or anyone else that 2050 is something that everyone must join.”

The future of coal, a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, also turned out to be one of the toughest issues to reach consensus on for the G-20.

At the Rome summit, the heads of state and government agreed “by the end of 2021 to end the provision of international public funding for new unchecked coal-fired power generation abroad”.

This means financial support for the construction of coal-fired power plants abroad. Western countries have turned away from such funding, and major Asian economies are following suit: Chinese President Xi Jinping announced at the UN General Assembly last month that Beijing would stop funding such projects, and Japan and South Korea made similar commitments earlier this year made.

However, China has not set an end date for building coal-fired power plants domestically. Coal remains China’s main source of energy, and both China and India have opposed proposals for a G-20 declaration to phase out domestic coal use.

The G-20’s failure to set a target for phasing out domestic coal has been a disappointment for the UK. Johnson’s spokesman, Max Blain, said the G-20 communiqué was “never intended to be a major lever to secure commitments on climate change,” noting that these would be drawn up at the Glasgow summit.

John Kirton, director of the G-20 research group at the University of Toronto, said leaders “only baby steps” with the deal, and next to nothing new.

He pointed to the agreement to “recall and reaffirm” their overdue pledge to help poorer countries with $ 100 billion and “to emphasize the importance of fully achieving this goal as soon as possible “Instead of saying they would raise the full amount.

The agreement to end international coal financing “is the only thing that is concrete and real. That matters, ”said Kirton.

The youthful climate activists Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate wrote an open letter to the media at the end of the G-20 and emphasized three fundamental aspects of the climate crisis that are often downplayed: that time is running out, that any solution must do justice to the strongest people affected and that the biggest polluters often hide behind incomplete statistics on their actual emissions.

“The climate crisis is only getting more urgent. We can still avoid the worst consequences, we can still reverse this. But not if we carry on as we do today, ”they wrote, just a few weeks after Thunberg shamed the global leaders for their“ blah blah blah ”rhetoric at a youth climate summit in Milan.

Greenpeace Executive Director Jennifer Morgan said the G-20 failed to provide the leadership the world needed. “I think it was betrayal to young people around the world,” she told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Aside from climate issues, leaders signed a landmark agreement for countries to introduce a minimum global corporate tax of 15%. The global minimum aims to deter multinational corporations from evading taxes by shifting profits to ultra-low rate countries where the corporations may do little business.

The leaders also said they would continue to work on a French initiative for wealthier countries to channel $ 100 billion in funding in the form of special drawing rights to needy countries in Africa, a foreign exchange instrument used to finance imports used that are allocated by the International Monetary Fund and also received by advanced countries. Leaders said they would “work on workable options” to make this happen, setting the $ 100 billion figure as an “overall global ambition” that is not an absolute commitment. Around 45 billion US dollars have already been redeployed by individual countries on a voluntary basis.

The commitment reflects concerns that post-pandemic recovery will be mixed as wealthy countries recover faster due to heavy vaccination and stimulus spending.

___ Associated Press authors Jill Lawless and Sylvie Corbet contributed to this report.

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