World ready for 'shared vision' on warming?

TOYAKO, Japan - A broad pledge by President Bush and other Group of Eight leaders to work towards halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 didn't impress environmentalists, but it could put pressure on emerging economies like China and India to follow suit.

The G-8 agreement on Tuesday did not bind nations or even provide much detail, and environmentalists called the effort too slow and too uncertain.

But the G-8 nations now want the leaders of eight fast-growing countries to adopt a "shared vision" of tackling global warming in U.N. negotiations due to conclude in Copenhagen in December 2009.

That shared vision endorses Bush's insistence that fast-developing countries must join in the effort by making significant emissions reductions.

"There has been major progress on the climate change agenda beyond what people thought possible a few months ago," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said at the G-8 summit here.

"For the first time the G-8 has said we will adopt at least a 50 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 as part of a worldwide agreement that we hope to get in Copenhagen," he said.

The U.N.-led talks aim to create a new framework for when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

WWF: G-8 stance 'pathetic'
But the G-8 accord fell far short of demands by some developing countries and environmentalists pushing for deeper cuts by 2050 and a firm signal from wealthy countries on what they are willing to do on the much tougher midterm goal of cutting emissions by 2020.

"To be meaningful and credible, a long-term goal must have a base year, it must be underpinned by ambitious midterm targets and actions," said Marthinus van Schalkwyk, South African Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism. "As it is expressed in the G-8 statement, the long-term goal is an empty slogan."

Critics also said the agreement was a timid advance on last year's G-8 summit commitment in Heiligendamm, Germany, to seriously consider the 2050 goal of halving emissions by mid-century.

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"This is a complete failure of responsibility. They haven't moved forward at all. They've ducked the responsibility of adopting clear mid-term targets and even the 2050 target is not a single thing more than what we got in Heiligendamm," said Daniel Mittler, Greenpeace International's political adviser.

Environmental group WWF called the G-8 stance "pathetic."

And Atonio Hill, a spokesman for Oxfam International, a confederation of organizations that work on climate change, poverty and other causes, said that "at this rate, by 2050 the world will be cooked and the G-8 leaders will be long forgotten. The G-8's endorsement of a tepid 50-by-50 climate goal leaves us with a 50-50 chance of a climate meltdown."

The G-8 did not specify a base year for its proposed 50 percent cut, and the actual emissions reductions and the effect on the environment could vary hugely depending on what is eventually decided. Reductions from 2005 levels, for instance, would be far less than from 1990 levels, as in the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

'Group of Five' not impressed
The cool reaction of a group of five developing countries also suggested that hard bargaining was in store.

China, India, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil have called on rich nations to slash their carbon emissions by 80-95 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, and make cuts of 25-40 percent by 2020.

Leaders from the Group of Five will join the G-8 leaders on Wednesday, the last day of the annual G-8 summit in a so-called Major Economies Meeting that Australia, Indonesia and South Korea will also attend.

The G-5's stance is important. The G-8 nations — the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, Germany, Russia, Italy and Canada — emit about 40 percent of mankind's greenhouse gas emissions. But China and India together emit about 25 percent of the total, a proportion that is rising as their coal-fueled economies boom.

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