In a more positive tone posing a promising prospect for the future, the fight against climate change reignites with renewed drive from world leaders.
What happened?
World leaders have come to a compromise and abandoned the proposed plan of former President Barack Obama’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Their agreement to move forward, despite the withdrawal of President Trump and the United States from the Paris Accord, marks a massive shift in the initial antagonistic attitude that was present regarding the issue.
The agreement moves forward the plan of developing the measures required to meet the desired goals to curb the effects of climate change by adopting the G20 Climate and Energy Action Plan for Growth. The plan was created after three days of negotiations at the G20 Summit held in Hamburg. Riddled with protests, the city of Hamburg saw retaliation towards capitalist incentives that plagued the United States’ intentions to back out of the Paris Climate Accord.
This summit, however, garnered media attention for yet another reason: the first formal meeting of President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. The meeting gained massive media attention, with President Trump openly accepting the statement made by Putin that Russia apparently did not have any intervention in the United States election.
What does this mean?
The attempt to develop a plan moving forward and create an alliance, in order to present a prerogative for the betterment of the climate, is certainly a sight in the right direction. The prerogative to develop the current situation at hand is evidently going to be a challenge, but the initial promise is a mark of positivity that the world desperately needs in regards to the damaging future that humans have in their hands regarding climate change.
However, media attention is rather pivotal in terms of how much traction a story receives, and such a situation is extremely noticeable with the king of attention in the centerfold with one of the most influential stories in politics today. Given that, the attention of this nature can be extremely detrimental towards the actual issue at hand and devalue the meaning of the actual attempts at change itself.
Regardless, change is good sometimes, and this time it may be better than we can anticipate.