South Africa on Tuesday dismissed an agreement by Group of Eight leaders to halve world carbon emissions by 2050 as an "empty slogan" that would not save the planet from global warming.

"While the statement may appear as a movement forward, we are concerned that it may, in effect, be a regression from what is required to make a meaningful contribution to meeting the challenges of climate change," South Africa's environment minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said.

"As it is expressed in the G8 statement, the long-term goal is an empty slogan without substance," he said in a statement issued in Japan after the rich nations' club announced a deal they hailed as a breakthrough.

Van Schalkwyk said the deal was woefully insufficient to stabilise the planet as greenhouse gases cause the planet to warm.

In Sapporo on the sidelines of the G8 summit some 150 kilometres away in Toyako, the minister said the long-term goal to reduce emissions by 50 percent by 2050 falls below what is scientifically required to stabilise the atmosphere at a relatively safe level.

He suggested that the heads of state and government of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States lacked leadership in tackling global warming.

"We came to Hokkaido with the expectation that the eight major industrialised economies of the world would demonstrate leadership on the climate change issue," he lamented.

Not the only ones

South Africa's condemnation of the G8 agreement is echoed by experts on global warming.

Leading scientists were critical on Tuesday of the G8's stance on global warming, saying its pledge was too vague and too distant to brake the oncoming juggernaut of climate change.

Experts acknowledged the Group of Eight's usefulness in setting a goal of at least halving worldwide greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. But, they complained, the G8 statement did not mention a base year by which this 50-percent cut would be compared.

Nor — more importantly — did it identify what cuts would be made in the next decade, a period critical for determining whether the fight against climate change will succeed or fail.

"It is a pretence that they understand the problem and plan to take needed actions," said James Hansen, one of the major figures in the history of climate science.

"In reality, they are taking actions that guarantee that we deliver to our children climate catastrophes that are out of their control."

At their summit in the resort town of Toyako, G8 leaders agreed to "consider and adopt" the goal of achieving a cut of at least 50 percent in worldwide carbon emissions by 2050, but they made no targeted promise for action in the medium term.

Hansen, who heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, was one of the first climate scientists to sound an alarm about the threat of global warming.

In an email, he excoriated the summit for failing to mention specific action against coal, which he characterised as the greatest peril.

The most abundant and polluting of the main fossil fuels, coal has enjoyed a resurgence as countries look for a cheaper alternative to oil and gas.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairperson of the UN's Nobel-winning panel of climate scientists, said the Toyako statement lacked some "very vital details," especially over the plans for the medium term.

"The sooner we start reducing emissions, the greater the likelihood of avoiding some of the more serious impacts and temperature increases that are going to take place a decade or two down the road," he said from Delhi.

» A grim future awaits... (Page 2)

AFP
Page: 1 of 2 - next