G8’s Climate Failure, Promising to Talk Further in Bali

While trumpeting yet more rhetoric on climate change absent action goals and timetables as a victory, the G8 leaders have failed to reach agreement on immediate emission targets to keep global mean temperature rise below 2 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels. The G8 meeting [news search] failed to gain concensus on a mandatory 50 percent reduction in global emissions. The US and Russia remained isolated in their refusal to accept binding emission cuts; as Europe and Japan embraced goals of cutting greenhouse gases by 50% by 2050. The Bush administration has evaded mandatory emission cuts saying they will “seriously consider” setting reduction targets with the rest of the world at a later date. About the only immediate good news of any substance to come out of the G8 climate change meetings is a pledge for talks on a Kyoto successor. There appears at least rhetorically to be a renewed political mandate to start negotiating a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol during climate meetings in Bali in December. This is something that Ecological Internet’s network campaigned for in recent weeks, as 2709 people sent 637,868 protest emails to UNFCCC government focal points. I would very much love to be proven wrong, but Bush’s recent pronouncements do not make him a friend of global climate. When climate science indicates 80-90% cuts in carbon dioxide and other GHG are required by 2050 to avert abrupt climate disaster, it is terrible that Bush’s reengagement in international climate policy making seems limited to floating proposals to delay and further obstruct active measures with goals and timetables. World leaders are failing their citizens, countries and Earth by constantly dragging their feet on getting going with mandatory emission reduction targets.

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