Latest update June 16th, 2026 12:40 AM
G20: Divided Priorities
While we in Guyana, not surprisingly, have been focusing on the Climate Change meeting in NY convened by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon it would appear that the US, one of the key players (if not the key player) needed to catalyse substantive progress for a new protocol in December, has its attention divided.
While President Obama, in his address to the other world leaders made all the right (albeit non-specific) noises, it was hard not to conclude that he was more preoccupied with the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh that will directly follow succeeding General Assembly.
This would be the third meeting convened by G20 in less than a year and while there have been some signs that the financial crisis that will once more be on the agenda may be abating, some other ominous signs have developed that will need to be addressed.
This is not to say that President Obama does not realise the gravity of continuing with the status quo on greenhouse gas emissions; he does but as is always the case with American foreign policy, the latter is always trumped by domestic electoral concerns.
An indication of this tendency was shown by Obama’s visit, before going to the UN, to a declining industrial community of Troy, 40 miles north of NYC, to assure middle-class families that he was well aware of the toll that global competition and boom-bust cycles have taken on their efforts to earn a living.
He commiserated: “Communities like this one were once the heart of America’s manufacturing strength. But over the last few decades, you’ve borne the brunt of a changing economy which has seen many manufacturing plants close in the face of global competition.”
It was obvious that talk of imposing cuts on carbon dioxide emissions that would increase domestic manufacturing costs were not on the cards.
More so, in light of the widespread accusations that Obama’s proposed Health Care reform was going to impose greater tax burdens on the all-important middle-class voting constituency.
Obama in no way, shape or form could make any promises on definite cuts in US emissions.
Two days before the Climate Change gathering, Obama had declared he would push world leaders this week for a reshaping of the global economy in response to “the deepest financial crisis in decades”.
Optimistically declaring that “green shoots” were clearly visible (the Americans have introduced the phrase into economic jargon to indicate “signs of a recovery”) Obama placed the onus on sustaining whatever recovery there was, clearly on the rest of the world: “We can’t go back to the era where the Chinese or the Germans or other countries just are selling everything to us, we’re taking out a bunch of credit card debt or home equity loans, but we’re not selling anything to them.”
The US President was repeating the old (and contentious) claim of his man at Treasury, Bernanke, that America’s credit profligacy to fund its spending binge were the fault of the foreign manufacturers (especially the dastardly Chinese) who were saving too much and producing their goods too cheaply.
The role of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency, which benefits the US financial sector but penalises the productive ones, is conveniently not mentioned.
The Chinese and Russians who have some different thoughts on the matter, are certain to raise the issue in Pittsburgh. Then there is the issue of US tariffs against Chinese tires.
The refusal of the US to also take a more draconian stand against the excesses of the financial sector has even raised the ire of the Europeans.
Getting China aboard the drive to make the world economy “more sustainably balanced” will take some doing: President George Bush’s promise to allocate a greater share of the IMF and World Banks decision-making power to the developing world (read China and India) have been stoutly resisted by the Europeans that will have to give up the most prerogatives.
The threats of global warming are perceived as long term for US politicians (longer than their four-year electoral cycle) while the recovery of the economy is in the “here and now”. Guess which one takes priority?
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