ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the climate change commitments of the Group of Seven/Eight (G7/8) and Group of Twenty (G20) summits since their start and to assess their members' compliance with them. It argues that the G7/8 increasingly made climate change commitments from 1985 to 2016, with a peak of 55 in 2008. The chapter explores how compliance with such climate change commitments can be improved by leaders through their use and improvement of low-cost accountability measures directly under their collective control. Controlling the world's changing climate has become a critical and compounding challenge upon which the well-being and even survival of life on the planet depends. Specifically, compliance was higher if climate change was given priority placement in the communique but lower if the commitment contained a reference to international law. Conversely, United Nation (UN) summitry may decrease G7/8 compliance, as members might pass the buck and rely on the United Nation to govern climate change.
