Hello and welcome to the Strawman, the daily climate newsletter that helps you make better decisions - have a glass of water, eat some fruit, we got you covered.

Today we’re checking in with world leaders at the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan. Let’s see how much progress they made…

Gimee’ Gas

You guessed it, the environmental conclusions of the G7 summit this week were pretty crappy.

The G7 committed to ‘fully or predominantly’ decarbonised power sectors by 2035 and an ‘accelerated’ phaseout of unabated coal.

Sounds great but really this is just a vague promise - I too will decarbonise fully or predominantly. See. Doesn’t mean much. Critics say it’s just not good enough and The Strawman happens to agree.

On top of all this, the G7 stressed ‘the role that increased deliveries of natural gas can play including public investment in gas as a temporary response’. This is a huge change of tone from where the G7 was a couple of years ago.

As we covered in previous issues, Germany came to the G7 with a request for the summit to vocalise support for continued public investment in Gas. They argued that they needed to follow this path to ensure their energy security in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Yep, so Germany won that one. Germany 1, G7 0.

Japan Calls for Coal

It’s not just Germany, but Japan too. It’s clear that Japan’s pressures were responsible for the weak stance on unabated coal.

Unabated coal refers to coal fuelled power generation with no carbon capture efforts made. It’s way worse even though we have the technology to reduce the emissions impact. It’s like a teacher forcing you to handwrite your exams. We don’t do that stuff anymore…

To be fair, since the 2011 tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan has been struggling with its energy security and leaned heavily in to fossil fuels. Critics argue that this has thrown Japan off the path to decarbonisation.

You see, it’s easy to invest in the energy transition when times are good. With the triple threat of inflation, high interest rates, and global conflict, the path is way less clear.

The weak language in the statement as well as the lack of timelines seems to show a half-hearted response to the climate crisis. Activists are particularly worried that the statements will set a negative precedent for developing economies who don’t see the G7 playing the leadership role they claim to have. For these critics, it’s clear that short-term thinking is currently winning out on the international stage and if we keep this up much longer, we won’t have an international stage.

Until next time,

The Strawman