Bush agrees to target on greenhouse gases

By David Pilling in Toyako and Fiona Harvey in London
Published: July 8 2008 04:23

George W. Bush bowed to pressure from other world leaders on climate change on Tuesday, agreeing for the first time to a long-term target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The decision to set a goal of halving emissions by 2050, in line with scientific advice, at the Group of Eight meeting of industrialised nations in Japan, marked what is likely to be the US president’s final contribution to the climate change debate.

The G8 leaders agreed to “consider and adopt . . . the goal of achieving at least 50 per cent reduction of global emissions by 2050, recognising that this global challenge can only be met by a global response”.
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said the agreement was “very positive in that it talks about an ambitious economy-wide goal”.
However, he warned that a long-term goal was insufficient without shorter term commitments too: “What I completely miss in this is any reference to what the G8 countries want their emissions to be in 2020.”
Yasuo Fukuda, prime minister of Japan, said leaders had been “able to overcome [their] differences to come to this agreement”.
José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, who was at the talks, said he was “very happy” with the deal, and Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, hailed it as “major progress”.
Mr Bush’s agreement, after more than a year of promising to commit to a long-term goal without proposing what that goal should be, moves the climate change debate forward significantly. If developing nations agree to the proposed halving of global emissions by mid-century – which is likely – then one of the most important components of an international accord to replace the Kyoto protocol will be close to settlement.
The UN is locked in negotiations, begun last December and scheduled to finish in late 2009, over the shape of an international agreement on climate change to succeed the Kyoto protocol when its main provisions expire in 2012.
Green campaigners poured scorn on the deal. Tom Sharman of ActionAid said: “They are passing the buck to China and India.”
Additional reporting by Krishna Guha and George Parker
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008