Relying on Paris, 2016

After the landmark United Nations (UN) climate summit in Paris in December 2015, attention turned to ratifying the Paris Agreement, raising the promised climate finance and taking all the other actions necessary to make it work. As world leaders were not due to meet at another UN climate summit for another half decade, these tasks fell to the Group of Seven countries (G7) in Ise-Shima, Japan, in May 2016, and the Group of twenty countries (G20) in Hangzhou, China, in September 2016. The G7 summit was hosted by Shinzo Abe, leader of a geographically small island country vulnerable to typhoons and sea level rise and long committed to climate change control. The G20 was hosted by Xi Jinping, president of a vast country that was the world's largest climate polluter and who was acquiring increasing personal control of the state.