G8 – just what is the point?
Well, the G8 summit meeting, taking place this week in Italy, has moved on to L’Aguila, spawning fears that, being so close to the epicentre of the recent earthquake site, there might be a risk from tremors.
If the general lack of any movement from the members is anything to go by, they have nothing to fear from any geological factors.
Today’s (Thursday, 9th July) agenda includes a meeting with the G5 and strives to cover policies for poorer developing countries. In and among all of this, the climate change commitments briefly reared their heads, with the larger members of the G8 (like the USA) not even being able to agree to commit to their previous 2050 carbon reduction commitments… and the 2020 ones are completely out of phase.
Which begs the question, what exactly is the point of all these G[xx] summits, other than to provide an opportunity for the members to enjoy a regular junket, courtesy of the respective citizen taxpayers? The G20 meeting earlier this year was notable for only two things; it made clear to all that nothing really gets decided at these meetings (all the signed policies had been previously agreed behind closed doors by the ‘Sherpas’) and, sadly, that our street level police really do believe they are above the law, hiding their badge numbers and using ‘kettling’ to fatal effect.
What this week is proving, in fact, is that behind all the bluster, the politicians are actually retreating from earlier commitments, which in and of themselves were fairly worthless since none have ever been followed by actions. Even the great hero from across the pond, Barak Obama, seems to be settling into the traditional role of a US President and diluting his commitments the moment the honeymoon period ended.
And that neatly brings us back to the original proposition that the only people who will measurably and significantly bring about change are those of us in the business community. But without any significant manufacturing base to speak of any longer, and with the City institutions slowly but surely exporting their top performers to the low income tax regions like the Swiss cantons, the challenge for the rest of us is to make a stand, take an ethical stance and create some actions that actually leave something of value for those more naturally ethical who will step into our corporate shoes in the not-too-distant future. Even Sir Stuart Rose is seeming more and more to have initiated ‘Plan A’ at M&S as a means of safeguarding profit and share price in a desperate bid to fight off the revolution that is brewing among the investors, rather than taking any kind of ethical lead.
As ever, I remain hopeful that common sense will prevail. Sometimes, however, I cannot but call to mind a remark made by Dr Caroline Lucas, Green MEP, a couple of years ago at a particularly good conference she spoke at, when she said “we will go down in history as the race that spent all its time monitoring its own extinction instead of preventing it!”.
Two years on and it appears that her remarks are still pretty much on-target and if we wait for the G[xx]’s of this world to do anything, it’ll be a pretty poor showing for all of us.
