Despite calls from environmental leaders, major insurance companies, global investors, and climate groups, the G20 has failed to put a deadline on phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, yet again.
German press agency DPA reported Monday that a late draft of the G20 Leaders’ Communique “did not mention plans to fulfill a promise the G20 made seven years ago to put an end to controversial fossil fuel subsidies.”
That recalcitrance runs counter to wide swaths of public opinion.
An open letter (pdf) in June from more than 200 civil society organizations called for a 2020 cut-off date, warning that the estimated $444 billion in G20 subsidies to the fossil fuels industry “are locking in long-lived, high-emitting infrastructure and unlocking new fossil fuel reserves.” Bloomberg, in an editorial last week, called fossil fuel subsidies “an egregious policy failure that has been allowed to persist for far too long.”
On the heels of the U.S. and China formally doing so on Saturday, the entire G20 did pledge to join the Paris climate agreement, with the communique saying leaders “expect a rapid implementation of the agreement in all its dimensions.”
But that deal—already limited in its ability to curtail global warming—is just lip service without action on subsides, said Oil Change International senior campaigner Alex Doukas on Monday.
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