The G20 nations, comprising the world’s biggest economies, provide four times more public financing to support fossil fuels than renewable energy, says a report from the environmental coalition Oil Change International. This took place even though German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced climate change as the heart of the agenda at the Hamburg summit in July 2017. The public financing—in soft loans and guarantees from governments along with huge fossil fuel subsidies—makes coal, oil and natural gas cheaper to use in the short run because both the front-end and back-end costs are undisclosed.

This article appears in the March 2018 issue of Natural Awakenings.