World leaders try to save Planet Earth in Charlevoix
If an invading alien force arrived this week in Karachi, Khartoum, Kiev, Kansas City or Kamloops, and its commander demanded of the quaking townspeople “take me to your leader,” what would the townspeople say?
Well, if the townspeople had been following the news lately they might offer the name of Justin Trudeau as a candidate for Leader of Planet Earth. That would be due to his status as current head of the G7 organization. Canada’s prime minister gets to be top G dog every seven years.
As many people of Earth know by now, or should know shortly, the G7 leaders will be meeting in less than a month’s time in the Charlevoix, which has not seen such a mighty rumble since the big earthquake of 1663 knocked the side of a local mountain into the Saint Lawrence River. It will be Canada’s sixth turn at hosting the G7 Summit, and the first time in Quebec since 1981 when Papa Trudeau hosted in Montebello.
The G7, for those without access to Wikipedia, includes the world’s top seven economies by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), plus the European Union: the United States, Japan, Germany, France, U.K., Italy and, in the tenth and final spot, Canada. It excludes the other top 10 economies: China, Brazil and India.
You may be interested and astonished to know that the country in eleventh spot in terms of GDP is Russia, which was expelled in 2014 from what was then the G8 over its invasion of Crimea. Suffice it to say relations between the Seven and Russia have gone downhill since then.
All told, the G7 leaders speak for about 10 percent of the world’s total population of 7.5 billion, which would kind of call into question the qualifications of the Earth Leader the alien commander would be taken to. That said, money talks, and the combined economies of the powerful G7 have greater theoretical clout than the rest of the economically struggling world.
What about the United Nations, you say, and what’s-his-name the secretarygeneral? Answer: Antonio Guterres, former prime minister of Portugal, and for all the good it may do in the name of humanitarian and health causes, the UN’S status as a beacon of political leadership is far from unanimous.
So let’s assume Canada’s Prime Minister Trudeau, as the rotating World Leader, would be the one who would have to respond when the alien commander asks: “What in the world happened here? Why are you silly humans fighting and killing each other all the time? And what about all that plastic in your oceans, which, even viewed from our home planet many light-years away, are awesomely beautiful.”
World Leader Trudeau likely would say, “I’ll take the last question first. As a matter of fact, alien commander, we the self-designated rulers of Earth, or at least the important parts, will be discussing how to clean up the oceans at the Summit coming up in the Charlevoix.” He adds, “you’re welcome to come and share your alien environmental best practices.”
Indeed, Trudeau, as the G7 host, gets to shape the agenda for the gathering, and he’s vowed to put the ocean plastic tide front and centre. (Is this when a certain G7 leader with orange hair slips off to try out the famous Manoir Richelieu golf course?)
The Public Engagement Paper drawn up for the meeting boldly notes: “… marine pollution has become one of the world’s largest environmental problems, while remaining amongst the least visible. Unprecedented levels of plastics are entering the ocean every year and this is only expected to increase.”
Trudeau might tell the alien commander that the G7 participants will take perhaps more than an hour to discuss “… how the G7 (should) work together to address these issues, including as it relates to expanding conservation, eliminating pollution, and promoting the sustainable use of maritime resources?”
The alien commander rolls his one big eye, and prepares to board his spaceship, shaped like a Tesla Roadster. “We don’t need to destroy your planet. You’ve pretty much done that yourselves. We’ll come back in an unspecified time measurement to salvage the plastic.”