Big polluters offer more help to poor countries

L’AQUILA, Italy — The world’s major polluters say they want to give poor countries more help in combatting global warming.

Leaders discussed the issue at the Group of Eight summit in L’Aquila, Italy.

President Barack Obama told reporters Wednesday that a meeting of finance ministers meeting in Pittsburgh in September will take up “creative proposals” on how to finance carbon emission reductions in the developing world.

Environmentalists say more help for poor countries could help bring agreement on a new climate change treaty to replace the Kyoto protocols which expire in 2012.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

L’AQUILA, Italy (AP) — The U.N. chief sharply rebuked the Group of Eight leaders on Thursday for failing to make more commitments to reducing climate change in the near term, saying they must do so if the heavily polluting developing world is to follow suit.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also said the industrialized nations must come forward with financing for poorer countries to change their carbon-heavy growth patterns and adapt to the effects of global warming.

“The policies that they have stated so far are not enough, not sufficient enough,” Ban said on the sidelines of the G-8 summit. “This is the science. We must work according to the science. This is politically and morally imperative and a historic responsibility for the leaders for the future of humanity, even for the future of planet Earth.”

Developing nations are upset at the G-8 for refusing to make more ambitious commitments, meaning that an agreement expected to emerge from a wider meeting of developing and developed nations on Thursday, in their view, will be nothing more than a political pledge to work harder toward crafting a new climate change treaty later this year.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said developing countries wanted a “fair and balanced” negotiation with industrialized countries on curbing greenhouse gas emissions that takes into account poorer countries’ need to grow, particularly during the economic downturn.

“I say fair and balanced because it has to treat both the reduction of emissions and adaptation from climate change in the same way,” he said in urging the summit to support financing plans that will transfer low-emission technology to the developing world and to help them confront the impact of global warming.

On the first day of their summit Wednesday, the G-8 recognized for the first time that average global temperatures shouldn’t exceed 2 degrees Celsius from preindustrial times. But the leaders made no commitments to do anything in the short term to reach that goal and they made no firm financial or technological commitments for poor countries to cope with climate change.

“I sincerely hope and I urge, and I’m going to urge, that the leaders of G-8 are responsible to lead this campaign,” Ban said. “They should be able to provide financial support, technological support” so that developing countries can mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

The G-8, which is comprised of Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan and the United States, was meeting Thursday as part of a 17-nation group called the Major Economies Forum, which has become the G-8’s main forum for climate issues. The group includes China, which has overtaken the U.S. as the world’s biggest polluter, and India, which is close behind. Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Australia, South Korea and the European Union also are in that club of the world’s major polluters.

Their talks come ahead of a critical meeting in December in Copenhagen, Denmark, which is to negotiate a new climate control pact to replace the 1987 Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012.

The G-8 statement issued Wednesday said the world’s major economies would take “robust” midterm reductions on their way to reducing 80 percent of heat-trapping carbon emissions by 2050. But they made no firm targets, despite recommendations from a U.N. panel which has said global emissions must be reduced between 25 percent and 40 percent by 2020 to keep average global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees above preindustrial levels 150 years ago.

Russian presidential aide Arkady Dvorkovic said Moscow plans to reach the 40 percent goal by 2020, but said the 80 percent goal by 2050 was “unacceptable to us and rather unattainable” — despite having signed off on the statement pledging to do just that.

Regardless, poorer countries say the 2050 goals are meaningless because they are too far away. They have refused to commit to any long or short-term reduction targets until the G-8 comes up with both 2020 targets and a clear-cut pledges to help them adapt to the impact of global warming.

In their draft statement Thursday, the MEF repeated that global temperatures shouldn’t exceed 2 degrees C from their preindustrial times. And they said that they would take actions to reduce emissions that would “represent a meaningful deviation from business as usual in the midterm.”

But they stripped out a reference from a June 30 draft that said they supported the “aspirational global goal” of reducing global emissions by 50 percent by 2050 with industrialized nations reducing at least 80 percent. Their draft statement now says they would work between now and the Copenhagen summit to “identify a global goal.”

The MEF also removed a reference to welcoming the launch of a $400 million initiative, funded by industrialized countries, to quickly help developing countries to prepare low-carbon growth plans and adapt to global warming. Environmentalists have said the funding is far too low to make a dent in what is needed.

It wasn’t clear if any progress could be reached Thursday, particularly considering the absence of Chinese President Hu Jintao, who cut short a visit to Italy because of serious ethnic violence in China.

“I don’t know how things can change without Hu in the room,” said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who has been following the talks. “I’m assuming that freezes things where they were, and this is basically what they have to go with.”