Global warming is a 鈥渟erious long-term challenge鈥� requiring 鈥渞esolve and urgency鈥�, declared the Group of Eight countries on Friday.
Notably, US president George W Bush, who alone among G8 leaders has refused to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol to combat climate change, accepted the language in the document delivered from the heads-of-state meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland.
快猫短视频s and environmentalists concluded that the G8 communiqu茅 on climate change 鈥渃ould have been worse鈥�.
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鈥淲e haven鈥檛 made any progress, but at least we haven鈥檛 gone backwards, which was what we feared,鈥� says John Lanchbery, the head of climate change at the UK-based Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
And most agreed with French president Jacques Chirac who claimed: 鈥淲e have noticed a shift in the American position.鈥�
The communiqu茅 adds: 鈥淲hile uncertainty remains in our understanding of climate change, we know enough to act now.鈥� But it included no new commitments to act.
No new targets
Simon Retallack at the Institute for Public Policy Research in the UK says: 鈥淚t is welcome that the communiqu茅 accepts the science of climate change. However, it contains no new targets or timetables or even in-principle support for binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions. This is essential if we are to drive the large-scale, near-term deployment of low-carbon technologies.鈥�
The G8 countries are responsible for 45% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Existing targets under the Kyoto protocol expire in 2012. A new round of talks on a post-Kyoto climate accord formally begins in Montreal, Canada, in December 2005.
There was confusion among observers over the communiqu茅鈥檚 remark that the UN鈥檚 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change was the 鈥渁ppropriate forum鈥� for negotiating future controls on greenhouse gases.
Some saw it as a welcome boost for the upcoming negotiations. Others saw it as a snub for the Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997, with its legally-binding targets and timetables.
Abandon Kyoto?
Many governments want the protocol to be succeeded by a similar agreement 鈥� dubbed 鈥渟on-of-Kyoto鈥� 鈥� with tougher emissions targets. But the US wants the international community to abandon the protocol鈥檚 legal rulebook in favour of a new start under the softer 1992 convention 鈥� which it had signed up to.
Europe has yet to take a position on that. But the UK government, which currently chairs the EU, may be preparing to back the US and scupper the protocol.
Earlier in 2005, a senior British climate negotiator, Henry Derwent, said: 鈥淲e must accept the future may not be like the past; an alternative to the target-and-trading approach might be necessary.鈥�
At a press conference after the summit closed, UK prime minister Tony Blair hinted at the same thing. He says he has not changed his view on emissions targets, but that if it was impossible to bring the US back into the consensus on climate change, then the world could not solve the problem.
