The G8 Summit at Gleneagles delivered small initiatives on Aid and Debt but nothing of real importance on the vitally important question of human-induced climate change. This despite the fact that there is almost unanimity among the scientific community that global warming is currently taking place and that it is fuelled, mainly, by burning fossil fuel and forest destruction.

It is also clear that, while rich countries in North America and Europe are mostly to blame the victims will be the poor in Third World countries. A one metre rise in ocean levels would be a disaster for millions of people in Bangladesh. Tens of millions of people in Pakistan, India, Thailand and China depend on rivers that rise in the melt waters of the Himalayas for water to grow food and meet their personal needs. Melting glaciers threaten their future.

This is why in  January 2004 Sir David King, the chief scientist to the British Government, wrote that climate change is a much greater threat to global security than terrorism because millions of people will be exposed to the risk of hunger, drought, flooding and debilitating diseases like malaria.

The Gleneagles meeting couldn’t effectively tackle global warming because of the obstinacy of President George W. Bush. Within months of being elected president he withdrew the US from the Kyoto Protocol ostensibly because it negative impact on the US economy. The real reason is that President Bush has close links with large petrochemical corporations. Pulling out of the Kyoto process has had a huge impact on its effectiveness because the US is responsible for 25% of greenhouse gases even though only 5% of the world’s population lives there.

Just one month before the G8 Summit Philip Cooney, an oil lobbyist, edited the Bush administration’s official policy papers on climate change to play down the link between greenhouse gases and global warming. This despite the call by the US National Academy of Sciences that the US needs to take immediate steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Gleneagles Summit recognized that climate change is serious enough for action to be taken to stop the increase in greenhouse gases. But no targets were set because of a potential veto from President Bush. Countries were encouraged to share technologies that are more energy efficient and do not depend of fossil fuel.  Prime Minister Blair has indicated that he will begin talks with China, India and other countries in the South who are destined to be  large energy consumers of the future to sign up to a post-Kyoto agreement on climate change.

Gleneagles failed to mandate the urgent action that is needed to stop climate change. Pressure needs to be put on politicians to stop bowing to vested interests. The Churches should play a central role in raising awareness as global warming is a moral issue. I notice that while Pope Benedict XVI urged the leaders to take ‘concrete measures’ to eradicate poverty, climate change was not mentioned. Could it be that the Vatican has not made the connection between global warming and poverty?