The obvious officially ignored, but unofficially it was everywhere

University of Melbourne’s
Associate Professor
Peter Christoff

What was obvious for most was officially ignored at Brisbane’s recent G20 Summit.

The world’s twenty most influential economies gathered at Brisbane to talk about growth when even those not paying attention must have realised that such discussions were intimately dependent upon a benign climate.

Save just one small paragraph, the final communique focussed almost entirely on growth, apparently blind to the complications inherent in driving for infinite growth on a finite planet.

Worsening this pointless rush for growth was the apparent ignorance, wilful or otherwise, that the much cherished growth is wholly dependent on the state of earth’s climate.

University of Melbourne’s Associate Professor Peter Christoff wrote on “G20 Watch” about the “Dangerous separation of economics and climate persists”.

Dr Christoff, who teaches and researches climate politics and policy in the Department of Resource Management and Geography, said, “Attempts by Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott to keep climate change off the G20 agenda fizzed - like his much-hyped 'shirt-fronting' of Vladimir Putin, who ended up only wearing a docile koala”.

If a formal sense, climate change was kept well away from discussions, or so it appeared, but informally that appeared to be the focus of a whole event.