Obama to push forward on climate change pack at G-8 summit
09 Jul 2009
President Barack Obama, six months into his term is rallying both developed and developing nations' top polluters to keep working towards a deal to counter global warming.
Obama has gained some momentum with a new agreement among developed and emerging nations on capping rising global temperatures and additionally good will from peers for a repositioning of US stance on the issue.
Yet the president will have his hands full when he leads the gathering of the world's major economies in Italy on Thursday, with both the wealthy and emerging economies thinking that the other side is not doing enough. The stalemate has to be broken if the pollution emitters are to work together on a binding plan to forge a strategy to counter climate change, according to experts.
But the first setback to the joint efforts came on Wednesday even as the G-8 nations set a goal of cutting all greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050 – a target the developing nations refused to endorse.
Scientists have called for urgently addressing the global warming challenge as trends indicate that the devastating droughts, floods and disease would follow if the warming is not arrested. The issue, therefore, is a major concern at the G-8 summit of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US.
However, the two blocs – the richest countries and the fastest growing economies have made some headway sealing an important agreement to limit global temperatures from rising beyond 2 degrees Celsius. Beyond the temperature rise limit the earth's climate system would become dangerously unstable, according to the UN chief panel on climate change.
