How could leaders from most of the world’s biggest economies be bothered to attend this week’s UN food summit in Rome? They’re too busy with other very important matters, right?
Wrong.
Though UN organizers will say some progress was made to at least keep attention high on “the plight of the more than one billion people going hungry,” I think the absence of leaders from the UK, USA, Canada, France, Russia, Japan, Germany and the European Union means that the quality of life for most of the world’s poor will continue to take a backseat to the quality of life for the world’s wealthiest citizens.
PM Harper is busy with an economic junket to China and India. He feels the need to keep the primacy of the Canadian economy first and foremost in everyone’s mind so that our collective lifestyle doesn’t slip an inch.
That Canadians are among the highest emitters of greenhouse gases per capita and growing chunkier by the year inside our jazzy Levis is very important to the man. I give him that.
I also tip my hat to Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, the only G8 head of government at the summit.
Sure (as reported here), “as the leader of the host country he all but had to attend, and by doing so he won a delay in a corruption trial against him which had been due to restart on Monday,” but still, I tip my hat.
Hey, I’m sure he cared!
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G8 leaders will surely pull their collective weight more effectively in Copenhagen in December, right?
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