established 1828W
hen the G7 was first convened
in 1976 it made sense for those
countries to gather. In a world
divided between democratic capitalism and
authoritarian socialism, as well as between
industrialised countries in the West and an
almost universally poor ‘developing world’,
the US, Japan, UK, Germany, France, Italy
and Canada were the wealthy nations who
could best solve problems. After the age
of imperialism, a summit of the powerful
seemed to symbolise a more enlightened
way of doing things.
More than four decades later, a meet-
ing of the same seven countries is an anach-
ronism. What right have Italy and Canada
(respectively the world’s eighth and tenth
largest economies) to be at the top table
when China (second), India (seventh) and
Brazil (ninth) are excluded? Simply by its
make-up, the G7 is beginning to look like a
doomed effort to preserve the hegemony of
white power. Its behaviour during the past
week at Biarritz has cemented this impres-
sion. Under President Macron’s influence it
has acquired an imperialistic air. It has itself
become the thing which it sought to replace.
Not for the first time, the environment
has been used as a pretext for western politi-
cians to lord it over their counterparts else-
where in the world. An outbreak of forest
fires in Brazil has been exaggerated in order
to create the impression of an emergency
which justifies intervention. Yet as Matt Rid-
ley and Charles Moore explain elsewhere in
these pages, there is nothing novel about
forest fires in the Amazon. Dramatic though
the pictures might look, wildfires are a natu-
ral phenomenon which have been occurring
ever since forests have been on the Earth.
They can, of course, also be caused by human
activities, yet there is no sign that they are
increasing globally. On the contrary, data
from Nasa satellites indicates a small gradu-
al reduction over the past decade and a half.
You would not have picked this up from
leaders at the G7 summit, who promised to
send $22 million to help fight the fires — on
the pretext that they were tackling a sudden
and dramatic worsening of the symptoms of
climate change. President Bolsonaro smelt a
rat and rejected the money. As he correctly
reasoned, handouts tend to come with a price
— they were part of a package which includ-
ed a long-term global strategy to protectthe rainforest, which is shorthand for saying
Macron expected Brazil to cede sovereignty
of the rainforest to him and other G7 leaders.
The West has been attempting to elbow
its way in to the issue of land use in Brazil
for years — and not entirely out of concern
for the environment. Brazil has huge agri-
cultural potential which, given the chance,
could make life more difficult for Europe-
an and North American farmers. Macron’s
fantasy that the Amazonian rainforests are
the ‘lungs’ of the world has been dreamed
up in an attempt to promote the idea that
the Amazon is a common resource for all
humanity. This is not a role which Macron
would gladly accept for the forests of France.
It seems to be fine for Europeans and North
Americans to clear land for agricultural use
— a job which was in many cases conveni-
ently completed centuries ago — but not for
developing countries whose agricultural sec-tors pose an economic threat to those of the
West. As one of Bolsonaro’s ministers point-
ed out, the G7’s $22 million might be better
spent on its own reforestation projects.
To put forest fires — along with cli-
mate change and biodiversity — top of
the G7 agenda was mere political postur-
ing on Macron’s part. Of course protecting
the environment is important and no coun-
try is ultimately going to prosper by trash-
ing its natural resources. But if developing
countries had a hand in deciding the agenda
in Biarritz they would surely have chosen a
rather different emphasis on proceedings.
Top of the agenda might have been open-
ing up western food markets to competition
from the developing world.
It was posturing, too, which put gender
equality near the top of the agenda. That is
surely an issue which individual nations can
be allowed to decide for themselves. What
should have dominated discussions, on the
other hand, was the threat of global reces-
sion, which has increased hugely in recent
weeks as several countries, including Brit-
ain, Germany and Italy, have reported poor
growth figures and the yield on govern-
ment bonds has turned negative. That is an
issue on which global co-operation is vital.
Little on that subject, however, from the G7.
Instead a programme was seemingly devised
to allow Macron to indulge in virtue-signal-
ling, to present himself as the anti-Trump
and spiritual leader of the EU.
What would have been the point, though,
in discussing the global economy without
the inclusion of powerhouses of growth
such as China and India? The G7 came
across as little more than a holiday club for
world leaders, a weekend by the sea in an
appropriately faded resort.Dead wood
The G7 is beginning to look
like a doomed effort to preserve
the hegemony of white power