Indonesian President Joko Widodo and his wife, Iriana, hosted a gala dinner Tuesday for leaders of the Group of 20 countries and other invitees at Garuda Wisnu Kencana cultural park in Bali.
While explaining the duty the leaders had of “love, responsibility, courage, and devotion” to caring for the planet, the president treated his guests to a lavish dinner with Wagyu beef tenderloin as the main course, according to the G-20’s report on the event.
It’s the kind of hypocrisy we’ve come to expect from our leaders.
The world leaders meeting in Bali affirmed their nations’ adherence to the goals of the U.N. climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland, last year as well as the Paris Climate Accords, Reuters reported.
Included in the Glasgow pact was a goal to reduce methane emissions by 30 percent, with cattle being the largest producers of methane emissions.
“Participants Commit to moving towards using the highest tier IPCC good practice inventory methodologies, consistent with [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] guidance, with particular focus on high emission sources, in order to quantify methane emissions; as well as working individually and cooperatively to continuously improve the accuracy, transparency, consistency, comparability, and completeness of national greenhouse gas inventory reporting under the [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] and Paris Agreement, and to provide greater transparency in key sectors,” the pledge said.
Having a nice steak dinner while pledging to crack down on emissions is almost comical.
The leaders in attendance seemed completely unaware of this, however.
“Mindful of our leadership role, we reaffirm our steadfast commitments, in pursuit of the objective of UNFCCC to tackle climate change by strengthening the full and effective implementation of the Paris Agreement and its temperature goal,” the G-20 leaders said in a declaration issued at the end of the meeting.
Should farmers be responsible for their farms’ methane output?
Yes: 6% (10 Votes)
No: 94% (152 Votes)
The leaders also appear to be blissfully unaware of how their methane, coal and fossil fuel reduction efforts will affect farmers in their countries.
Richard Dawkins, vice president of Marlborough Federated Farmers in New Zealand, already anticipates the effects of emissions taxes for farms.
“This unscientific emissions tax will, according to government modelling, see a reduction in sheep and beef production in NZ by over 20% and dairy by 5%,” Dawkins wrote in an opinion piece Saturday for New Zealand’s Stuff.
“The flow-on effects of this are predicted to be severe on our team of 5 million,” he continued.
“Our economy relies heavily on our primary sector, which contributes 20% of GDP, one out of 10 jobs and 75% of merchandise exports. Do we really want to kill, or strangle the golden goose?”
“The reality is that there are no practical methane mitigation technologies available for farmers to use at this point in time,” Dawkins said.
According to the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, reducing methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030 “could eliminate over 0.2˚C warming by 2050.”
For a reduction of .02 degrees C, it seems well-off global leaders will fly private jets to important galas, dine on expensive meat they didn’t pay for, and then fly back home to demand their constituents cut down on their meat consumption while adopting a more sustainable lifestyle.
Global Methane Pledge by The Western Journal
More amazingly, it seems many will wonder why they aren’t seen as heroes for telling others to do the important work of saving the planet that they can’t be bothered with.
