The G7 leaders need to take a lesson in collective responsibility – from our schoolchildren

You couldn’t have found a more apt setting than the faded grandeur of Biarritz. In the hands of Thomas Mann, it would make a wonderful, depressing short story

Richard Godwin
Tuesday 27 August 2019 22:14 BST
Comments
Donald Trump suggests holding next G7 at his financially struggling golf resort

All happy neoliberal democracies are alike; each unhappy neoliberal democracy is unhappy in its own way. Ever since the 2007 financial crisis began to expose our collective illusions, it has often struck me that Leo Tolstoy’s famous axiom applies much better to nations than it does to families. The bizarre G7 summit in Biarritz is a case in point. Or, rather, a case in pointlessness.

The main aim of the gathering was not to find any common ground that President Trump could later napalm with a tweet. So the only thing that the six patriarchs and one matriarch of the great American, British, French, German, Italian, Canadian and Japanese families could find to agree on was that it’s a bummer that vast tracts of pristine, irreplaceable rainforest are burning in Brazil.

We are talking 40,000 species of plants, 1,000 types of bird, capybaras, pink river dolphins, nine-banded armadillos, hyacinth macaws, versus the interests of a few Big Mac farmers. It shouldn’t be that hard. But it was.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in