European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said today he will press the United States and other nations to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees at this week's Group of Eight summit.
The United States, Japan, Russia and Canada have yet to be convinced that a 2 degrees (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) limit - favoured by European G8 nations Germany, Britain, France and Italy - is the necessary threshold beyond which climate change will reach danger levels.
But Mr Barroso said he would "stress the importance of the science and remaining within a 2 degrees temperature rise" when he meets his G8 counterparts and leaders of developed and emerging economies at the three-day summit from Wednesday.
"We go to L'Aquila with a number of key objectives. We will insist on the need to respect the 2 degrees Celsius target," he told a news conference ahead of the summit in the Italian city devastated by an earthquake in April.
The EC chief said he would also push for an agreement by the 17-member Major Economies Forum (MEF) on the sidelines of the G8 summit to "reiterate the need for a global goal of achieving at least a 50 percent reduction of global emissions by 2050".
"This in turn means that developed countries must reduce emissions by at least 80 percent in the same period and underpin these efforts through robust and comparable mid-term reductions," he said.
A substantive MEF agreement this week would go a long way in defining a new U.N. climate treaty due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December, to replace the Kyoto Protocol.
The MEF group - which accounts for 80 per cent of global emissions - includes major developing countries which do not want to back long-term climate goals before rich nations agree tough near-term action to limit their output of planet-warming greenhouse gases.
"Developed countries have a special responsibility to take the lead. But this is not going to be enough," Mr Barroso said.
"The emerging economies, for example, where growth in emissions is surging, must also join in the effort. We must all do our part, in line with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities."
Last year, industrialised nations in the G8 agreed at a summit in Japan to a "vision" of halving world greenhouse gases by 2050, but developing countries including China, India and Brazil did not adopt that 2050 goal.
Reuters