Trump has G20 nations cowed

Like the proverbial bull in a china shop, Donald Trump seems to be a phenomenon that world leaders either want to avoid or want to go out of their way not to upset.

That’s the only explanation for the accommodation they reached with the American president at the weekend’s G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany.

While hundreds of protesters turned the streets into a war zone, the G20 countries backed down from confronting Trump over his decision to pull out of the 2015 Paris Agreement on action on climate change.

Acknowledging the US would not honour the agreement, the G20 allowed the Americans to say, in the final meeting statement, that they would act on harmful emissions only if such action was compatible with economic growth.

Given that the US is one of the world’s biggest producers of greenhouse gases, the concession basically allows the Americans to put money ahead of the future of our planet.

No wonder the protesters outside the G20 meeting were so angry. Even more disturbing, though, is that after the American government has thumbed its nose at global warming, there is the prospect that others might follow.

That’s going to be hard to explain to our grandchildren