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G20 recognizes carbon pricing as climate change tool for first time
(Reuters, 10 Jul 2021) Efforts to acknowledge carbon prices as a way to tackle global warming were previously rebuffed by the U.S. Trump administration.
G20 finance leaders recognized carbon pricing as a potential tool to address climate change for the first time in an official communique on Saturday, taking a tentative step towards promoting the idea and coordinating carbon reduction policies.
The move marked a massive shift from the previous four years when former U.S. President Donald Trump's administration routinely opposed the mention of climate change as a global risk in such international statements.
The communique, issued on Saturday after a meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors in the Italian city of Venice, which is threatened by rising sea levels, inserted a mention of carbon pricing among a "wide set of tools" on which countries should coordinate to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Such tools include investing in sustainable infrastructure and new technologies to promote decarbonization and clean energy, "including the rationalisation and phasing-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption and, if appropriate, the use of carbon pricing mechanisms and incentives, while providing targeted support for the poorest and the most vulnerable," said the communique from the financial leaders of the world's 20 major economies.
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Reuters, 10 Jul 2021: G20 recognizes carbon pricing as climate change tool for first time
