What Are National And World Leaders Doing Environment?

The question in its current form fails to make complete sense, and its inherent ambiguity requires me to offer a couple of suggestions about what it could possibly be referring to. Obviously the question is concerned with the actions of national and world leaders in respect to the environment, and the lack of names for either specific countries or their leaders suggests a general outline is required. Since the phrase 'Doing Environment' fails to make sense, it is impossible to know if the question is asked concerning the positive or negative aspects of national governmental policy towards the environment worldwide. As a result then, I will attempt to briefly summarise the policy of both national and world leaders - as far as the concept of a 'world leader' can be said to exist - concerning the environment, and especially the actions they are taking, both negative and positive, towards climate change, since in the last decade this growing issue has been at the centre of such policy. The main international body dealing with environmental issues is the G8 - consisting of leaders and energy ministers from the developed countries Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the United Russian Federation -  which meets twice annually in order to discuss policy towards the environment, with the overall aim of preventing climate change. The group also attempts to involve from developing countries such as India and China. Thus, there is an orchestrated effort among world leaders from the world's most powerful countries to unite in order to prevent or slow climate change. However, actual progress in this aim has been limited, and many organised green groups have criticised the Group's lack of success in reaching the aims they set for lowering rates of climate change. There has been tension within the group itself as some members felt that they were being handicapped in what measures they could implement due to the stubbornness of some countries, most notably the United States of America which is also arguably the most influential nation, to take the problem of climate change, and the threat it holds to the environment, seriously. An example was the refusal of the previous American President George W. Bush to accept the Kyoto Protocol's cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. Equally troublesome is the ever increasing industrial progress of nations in the developing world, such as China, India, and Brazil - the latter of which is seen as failing to  prevent the cutting down the world's largest rainforests. There is currently a difficult balance to be met between allowing these countries to improve economically, and preventing their greenhouse gas emissions from increasing at such a damaging rate. As long as these countries continue to industrialise at such a phenomenal rate, all other policies attempting to assist the environment seem redundant. To deal with this, the G20, which contains such countries, is becoming ever more prominent in world affairs. Ultimately, world leaders are aware and discussing issues of the environment. In practice their success in stopping damage being done to it is far more limited.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G20_(Group_of_economies)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G8 environment.about.com/od/globalwarming/a/g8nations.htm www.g20.org/index.aspx