G8 Wrap-Up: Progress on Africa, Punting on Global Warming

G8 leaders, and musicians Bob Geldof and Bono, are hailing the recent G8 summit as a success, noting a fairly substantial aid package for Africa and a statement on global warming (that's free of any concrete goals). While I don't know that any of us expected historic developments from this summit, I have difficulty seeing how this meeting did anything beyond addressing some short-term needs. Africa needs financial aid and debt relief, and the aid package will definitely help people who are suffering. But that suffering will only get worse as climate change continues to accelerate.

While political leaders in general aren't known as complex thinkers, I was definitely disappointed to see so much news coverage praising Dubya for stating the obvious: climate change as we're experiencing it is laregely a product of human CO2 emissions. And, then, I saw little questioning of his repeated statement that we're on the way to climate salvation through the development of hydrogen fuel-cell cars. Clearly, we're not going to get much leadership here. While the private sector, to some degree, seems to have grasped the whole climate-change concept, I have to wonder if market-based solutions without concrete targets can get us where we need to go...

Technorati tags: G8 summit, Africa, global warming, politics

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