The results of last week’s G20 summit have been summarized, discussed, and analyzed at length across a variety of mediums over the past few days. It’s worth taking a look at how the strategies of the rhetoric used at the summit effected change within it.
One of the biggest changes resulted from President Barack Obama’s urge for the Group of 20 leading world economies to work on international cooperation. The G20 leaders agreed to shift power in the International Monetary Fund so that developing countries will have more of a voice. Their decision to increase the voting power of developing countries might have been a way for the IMF to have more legitimacy and be more effective in international affairs, but this could also have been a rhetorical strategy to hide the real intention of increasing developing countries’ voting power: with their increased power, these countries will also be taking on more responsibility. With the economic crisis still affecting many in the industrialized world, passing off a substantial amount of the responsibility onto developing countries is a way for industrialized countries to get away with not dealing with some of the issues that they themselves have created in the first place.
On a similar level, Barack Obama also called out Iran for the country’s covert operations of a small-scale uranium-enriching plant. It is interesting that the US is taking issue with the development of Iran’s clandestine site, even though the US has been aware of the site for years. Why are they now objecting to it, when they had the power to object to it years earlier? So far, this question has not been taken up by mainstream media. I think that it’s a legitimate query and one which we should be asking. If a country as powerful as the US is aware of the construction of a nuclear power plant but does not do anything about it until the plant becomes a threat, what does that say about us as a global society? It seems to be a fair representation of our usual habit of letting problems grow bigger and bigger, ignoring them until they start to directly affect us.
After all, that’s what has happened with climate change. It is not until now, when we realize that we today are being affected negatively by climate change and global warming, that organizations and leaders are getting together to talk about making changes. Talking about it, mind you. Yes, there is some action taking place, but for the most part it remains all talk and very little action.
Analyzing the rhetoric involved in conferences such as the G20 summit allows us to think about how we act and respond to global issues. Too much short-term thinking, and too much attention being paid to issues that only affect us directly rather than the world and people as a whole, is one of the fundamental roots of serious worldwide problems. By changing our rhetoric, we can effect change for the better in our actions on both a domestic and a global level.