World leaders have pushed Donald Trump to join the rest of the world in combating climate change – but the President has made no promises despite the White House insisting his views are “evolving”.
G7 nations had hoped the US leader, who has previously described climate change as a “hoax”, would publicly back the Paris Agreement and the commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Rather, according to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leaders had a “controversial debate” on the subject.
Despite that, and despite repeated criticism that Mr Trump has turned his back on science, the US insisted that the President had gone to listen and learn to the other world leaders.
The meeting in Taormina, Italy, of the heads of the world’s seven major industrialised economies, did secure widespread agreement on other issues, including Syria, Libya, and fighting terrorism.
The group ramped up pressure on internet service providers and social media to increase efforts to purge extremist content, four days after the terror attack in Manchester that killed 22 people, by toughening a final statement to fight terrorism, honing in on the role of companies like Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, sometimes referred to generally in Europe using the acronym Gafa.
“We will combat the misuse of the Internet by terrorists. While being one of the most important technological achievements in the last decades, the Internet has also proven to be a powerful tool for terrorist purposes,” said the joint statement signed by the leaders meeting in Sicily.
However that co-operation did not stretch entirely to the issue of Global warming. “There is one open question, which is the US position on the Paris climate accords. All others have confirmed their total agreement on the accord,” Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said.
“We are sure that after an internal reflection, the United States will also want to commit to it,” he added.
The White House’s decision to go slow on making a decision about his commitment to the 2015 climate change agreement – something Mr Trump said he would withdraw from when he was campaigning – led the other leaders to mount their campaign of persuasion.
During the opening months of this presidency, he has shown he can change his position, especially when confronted by strong and unified global opinion.
For instance, he backed away from tough campaign talk about trade with China after a summit with President Xi Jinping and abandoned his criticism of Saudi Arabia.
