G-8 Failure to Set Course on Emissions Threatens Climate Fight

July 9 (Bloomberg) — The Group of Eight’s climate-change strategy may fail to contain rising temperatures that threaten to cause more floods, droughts and storms.

The world’s richest countries, which are responsible for almost half of the world’s emissions, yesterday pledged to reduce the production of heat-trapping pollution by at least 50 percent by 2050. They didn’t specify how those cuts should be reached or provide intermediate targets.

The G-8 will press the rest of the world to adopt the 50 percent goal, which environmental group Friends of the Earth and South Africa said doesn’t go far enough. The failure to outline how to achieve the cuts may hurt the chances of reaching a global agreement, said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the Bonn-based United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

“What I find completely missing is any reference to what the mid-term goals of rich countries and especially G-8 nations need to be,” de Boer said yesterday in a telephone interview. “Clarity on that is essential to come to an agreement” for all nations.

Bloomberg