ABSTRACT
In 2017, the global summit governance of climate change was dominated by the test imposed by Donald Trump, who became United States (US) president on January 20 and brought the most aggressive anti-environmental approach of any Group of Seven countries (G7) and most Group of twenty countries (G20) leaders ever. At the G7 summit in Taormina, Italy, in May, G7 leaders energetically tried to convince Trump to reverse his intention to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement. They failed. Not long after, in July, Germany's Angela Merkel, hosting her first G20 summit, in Hamburg, tried another approach. She succeeded. Hamburg performed strongly on climate change, even with Trump there. Hamburg's success, however, did not extend to the United Nations, at its annual ministerial-level Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at Bonn in November and its solid performance.
