Environmentalists argue 50% target is insufficient, and have clamored for ambitious midterm targets for countries to cut emissions by 2020.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFec emissions 88 224(photo credit: Bloomberg)
The Group of Eight industrialized nations on Tuesday endorsed halving global emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 and called on individual countries to set goals reducing their own emissions much earlier, Japan's prime minister said.
"The G-8 nations came to a mutual recognition that this target - cutting global emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050 - should be a global target," Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said.
The G-8 has been under pressure to secure commitments by wealthy nations to push forward stalled UN-led talks on forging a new accord to battle global warming by the end of next year.
The G-8 countries - the United States, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Britain, Canada and Italy - pledged last year at a summit in Germany to seriously consider the same target. The Japanese hosts of this year's summit had hoped to solidify that commitment at the meeting in Toyako, northern Japan.
"We confirmed at the Toyako summit that for the world this long-term target is a just and necessary target," Fukuda said.
Environmentalists have argued the 50 percent reduction target is insufficient, and have clamored for ambitious midterm targets for countries to cut emissions by 2020.
Such shorter-term targets, however, have been much more difficult to reach consensus on. The United States, for instance, has argued that meeting an oft-cited goal of reducing emissions by between 25 percent and 40 percent by 2020 is unrealistic.
In a nod to such disagreements, Fukuda said the G-8 countries would set individual targets.
"The G-8 will implement aggressive midterm total emission reduction targets on a country-by-country basis," he said.
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