In response to Fandango’s Who Won the Week posts, I have been looking at my own newsfeeds.

---

Did you follow that big meeting this week?

No, not COP26. But climate? Hold that thought.

I’m talking about the G20 in Rome last weekend, which saw a US delegation arrive in a motorcade of 84 cars, no less!

And, most of those cars had been flown over to Italy, from the USA.

When our leaders talk big about climate change, who’s kidding who? In the same week where I’m going down to the granularity of removing cows’ milk from my diet, it’s a joke.

All the articles I found use the story to take a pop at Biden. Probably unfairly, I think. I’m not sure how much one person – even a president – can do to change a culture. And I suspect even he would have been horrified, had he known. And it’s a problem we all have – we think that society should downsize, but don’t realise that society is us. We all know we should fly less but… just one more flight won’t hurt, will it? Even the electricity that powers our gadgets comes at a price^*.

* unless you’re Icelandic, where it’s geothermal.

But I think with Donald Trump’s open skepticism, the world at least knew where it stood. It’s far less clear now.

https://nypost.com/2021/10/29/joe-biden-sees-rome-with-85-car-motorcade-before-climate-summit/

The G20 in Rome. President Biden’s motorcade is reportedly made up of some 84 vehicles pic.twitter.com/RIjbI9sDdI

— gavin jones (@gavinjones10) October 31, 2021