Caroline Lucas, on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group. – Mr President, the G20 was a massively missed opportunity for tackling both the environmental crisis and the economic crisis at the same time – in other words for introducing what we are calling a ‘Green New Deal’. That meeting should have been the moment for a massive investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency, for example, not just because we have to urgently address the challenge of climate change, but because investment in green technologies is one of the best ways of getting people back to work.

Green energy, for example, is far more jobs-rich than investment in business as usual, yet the package agreed by the G20 will actually lock the world into a high-carbon economy at exactly the time that we should be shifting to a very different low-carbon sustainable economy. Billions of euros were found for the IMF and the World Bank, but for making that vital transition to a green economy there was no serious money on the table, just vague aspirations – just talks about talks.

The communiqué’s words about climate change and the low-carbon economy were relegated to just two paragraphs at the end of the communiqué, with no specific commitments. It is a tragedy that, at the very moment when the economic system and the global environment are on a collision course, this crucial opportunity to change direction and to make sure that we tackle both of those crises and get people back to work was lost.