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G20 sounds alarm over climate emergency despite US objections,Group’s first ever reference to global heating signals growing economic concerns over climate change, Guardian,  Richard Partington Economics correspondent @RJPartington, Mon 24 Feb 2020 The G20 group of the world’s wealthiest nations have agreed for the first time to collectively sound the alarm over the threat to the financial system posed by the climate emergency.Overcoming objections from Donald Trump’s US administration, G20 finance ministers and central bank governors meeting in Saudi Arabia over the weekend agreed to issue their first ever communique with references to climate change, according to reports from Reuters.

Sources told the news agency that the statement of priorities included the importance of examining the implications of global heating for financial stability, as part of the work of the G20’s Financial stability Board, the steering group for international banking industry rules.

The language represented a compromise to overcome opposition from US officials at the first major meeting of Saudi Arabia’s year-long presidency of the G20, according to the sources. An attempt to include references to the downside risks for global growth posed by the climate crisis was dropped…….

The International Monetary Fund included climate-related disasters in a list of the risks facing a highly fragile recovery in the global economy this year. However, the increasing focus comes as US officials resist naming global heating as an economic risk, following Trump’s move at the outset of his presidency to withdraw the world’s largest economy from the Paris climate accords. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/23/g20-sounds-alarm-over-climate-emergency