G8 negotiators seek to resolve climate impasse

Nature Features

By Mike Swanson Jun 4, 2007, 15:55 GMT

Berlin - Chief negotiators of the world's leading industrial nations are meeting in Berlin on Tuesday in a last-ditch effort to remove obstacles threatening to derail a G8 deal on climate change. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country is current president of the G8, wants this week's summit in Heiligendamm to agree to set long-term proposals to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But she faces opposition from US President George W Bush, who wants to convene a global summit that includes a new generation of polluters from the developing world such as China, India and Brazil. China on Monday issued its own plan for responding to global climate change but urged developed nations to take the lead and allow poorer nations to focus on economic development. At the same time, Japan said it would use the G8 to launch an aid programme for developing countries that would encourage them to fight global warming as well as pollution and poverty. Germany wants the G8 to agree to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 50 per cent below 1990 levels by the year 2050 in order to ensure that the world's average temperature increase due to global warming does not exceed 2 centigrade. Germany wants this to form the framework for a new United Nations protocol on climate change to replace the Kyoto agreement when it expires in 2012. The role of China, which is not a member of the G8, is crucial, as many experts believe it could overtake the United States this year as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. Merkel, who has made the fight against global warming a key issue of Germany's G8 presidency, is scheduled to lunch with Bush immediately before the start of the G8 summit on Wednesday. There has been a mixed reaction to the president's call for global warming talks with a select group of polluter nations. But it was not meant to sideline broader UN discussions on climate change, US national security advisor Stephen Hadley said last week. 'It is an effort to try and find consensus on the way ahead,' he said ahead of the G8 summit grouping the US, Canada, Germany, Japan, France, Britain, Italy and Russia. The US has acknowledged that climate change is a serious problem caused by humans that requires action - though, in the US, only through voluntary steps. 'This week presents an opportunity to turn Mr Bush's newfound interest in climate change into a commitment to do something about it soon,' Britain's Observer newspaper said in an editorial. Merkel won backing from British Premier Tony Blair, although she appears to be less optimistic that a landmark deal will be reached at the summit to cover the post-Kyoto period. 'At the G8 we need to agree the elements of a future framework,' Blair told parliamentarians in the German capital on Sunday. 'This would allow the UN talks to accelerate and reach earlier agreement so that we have a framework for Kyoto in place by 2009.' Merkel, who was due to meet Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Monday evening and Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe on Tuesday, said she was confident the pre-summit talks would lead to 'important steps' being agreed. 'We will fight until the very last moment for concrete wording,' government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said in reference to the final communique to be issued by the end of the week. © 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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SP4: The real issueJun 4th, 2007 - 21:38:54

Climate change is a euphenism for wealth redistribution. The developing nations, paradoxically, think that clipping the G8 for steeper cuts will, somehow, help them.

The steeper the cut for the America's, the harder it will be on our tradig partners. Has anyone even asked how cutting America's GDP will help our trading partners???

Of course not. The idea is to hobble the big players, so that Europe, etc. will be under the delusion that it will even the playing field on competitiveness.

Anyone ask what the consequences of trying to lower consumption of energy will do to economies? By the way, has anyone asked why, if global warming is a reality, why the cuts from any nation are not welcome?

Has anyone bothered to check pollution standards in America and compare them to the rest of the world?

Get the socialists out of capitalism. They are terrible at it.

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billJun 5th, 2007 - 07:29:23

The Chinese (communist version of socialist) are doing pretty well at capitalism ! Goodbye america and all your delusions and paranoia

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BillJun 5th, 2007 - 09:17:59

By the way, I posted the above because it appears that americans can only take in information if it is repeated slowly several times

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BuffoonJun 7th, 2007 - 22:51:11

I can think of anything intelligent so i will bash the USA...Denier mentality.

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