G8 Agrees on Compromise Climate Change Deal

The G8 nations have agreed to a compromise deal on climate change, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor has reported Thursday.

|PIC1|The German Chancellor who is hosting the G8 Summit in Heiligendamm, Germany said: "We agreed... that CO2 emissions must first be stopped and then followed by substantial reductions."

Some of the most powerful leaders in the world have agreed to follow-up with discussions on a replacement to the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol within a UN framework.

An extract from the agreed text published on the G8 website has explained that the leaders have agreed to take "strong and early" action.

The document added: "Taking into account the scientific knowledge as represented in the recent IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] reports, global greenhouse gas emissions must stop rising, followed by substantial global emission reductions."

Prior to the Summit commencing, German Chancellor Angela Merkel attempted to drive forward a goal-orientated discussion towards reducing carbon emissions, calling for the G8 nations to cut levels by 50 per cent by 2050 to halt climate change.

Merkel has said that 50 percent cuts are needed to ensure that global temperatures do not rise more than 2 Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a threshold the EU has said will trigger "dangerous" changes in the climate system.

US President George Bush on the other hand has been one of the leading critics of trying to set targets at this year's G8 Summit. Instead he plans to call together the leading 15 greenhouse emitters -- led by the United States, China, Russia and India -- to agree on cuts beyond 2012 by the end of 2008.

Following yesterday's talks Merkel in particular was delighted with the progress made, saying that the deal was a major success.

However, critics to the talks have already begun saying that the precise wording of Thursday's agreement is insufficient and will prove significantly less impact that what is required to halt climate change.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair dismissed concerns regarding an absence of a precise definition of "substantial cuts" used in the agreement.

Blair said: "I'm both surprised and very pleased at how far we have come forward in the couple of years since [the 2005 G8 summit at] Gleneagles.

"Now we have an agreement that there will be a climate change deal, it will involve everyone, including the US and China, and it will involve substantial cuts."