Leaders fudge global warming impasse

Climate changeAs widely anticipated, the G8 summit failed to make significant immediate progress on the issue of climate change, due to fundamental disagreement between the US and the other members on greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.

However, the British presidency expressed satisfaction that steps were taken to begin a formal dialogue on the issue.

Unlike the other G8 members, the US is not signed up to the Kyoto Protocol, which provides for mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

However, British Prime Minister Tony Blair pointed out at a news conference that differences over Kyoto were never going to be resolved at Gleneagles. But he believed the summit had laid down a "pathway to a new dialogue when Kyoto expires in 2012" and he held out hopes that the US, China and India would be part of that dialogue.

Issuing both a communique and a "Gleneagles Plan of Action" on the issue, the G8 acknowledged that climate change was caused, in part, by "human activities" such as the use of energy generated from fossil fuels. Mr Blair said that acknowledgment was one of his basic objectives for the summit.

However, the communique also contains a nod in the direction of the US in noting that "uncertainties remain in our understanding of climate science".

President Bush has consistently sought to draw the emerging economies of China and India - both in attendance for part of the summit - into international discussions and negotiations on climate change. Mandatory restrictions on US greenhouse gas emissions would give a major commercial advantage to them. And the communique stresses the need for "partnership with major emerging economies" to deal with the problem.

Instead of binding commitments on emissions, the communique stresses the need to develop new, cleaner technologies.

The UK would hold meetings later this year to "take the dialogue forward" and it would be on the agenda for G8 meetings in 2007 and 2008.

Pat Finnegan of the Greenhouse Ireland Action Network (Grian) said: "Thanks to opposition from George Bush, Tony Blair's ambitious plans to deliver an action plan against climate change at Gleneagles came to an almost complete dead-end." The summit conclusions only permitted an ill-defined programme of "talks about talks" and there was "nothing of substance in terms of real action".