Back in September, Heritage fellow James Roberts wrote of the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh: In the past 10 months, the leaders of the G-8 and G-20 nations have met three times at elaborate and expensive summits to address the world’s financial woes. … Originally a Group of Six–France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States–with Canada added in 1977, the G-7 process attempted to deal with the OPEC oil shock-induced economic crises of the 1970s as well as the need to re-design the post-World War II Bretton …
Tourists might buy souvenirs, but President Obama is seeking “deliverables” he can bring home to convince Americans that the millions of their tax dollars spent to send the huge U.S. delegation to the G-8 Meeting in Italy this week was money well spent. So, he has been leaning on other G-8 leaders to support his plan to provide new development assistance funds for programs in poor countries in Africa and elsewhere to help farmers learn how to grow more food. No doubt the President would also like to travel from …
At the G8 Summit in Japan, there was much talk about global warming, and considerable self-congratulation over the agreement among member nations to reduce greenhouse gas emission by 50% by 2050. There were also predictable cries from environmentalists that this target was not sufficiently stringent or legally binding. But negotiations about future targets miss the point. Rather than setting new goals, member nations should be looking at whether current goals are being met, and if not, whether a different approach is warranted. Under the Kyoto Protocol, the multilateral treaty that …
