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Environmentalists decry G8 deal as `empty gesture'

Environmental groups dismissed a climate change accord hammered out by the G8 wealthy nations as an empty gesture but observers hailed the pact yesterday for tying the US to the goal of fighting global warming.

The G8 agreed at a summit in this German seaside resort to pursue major cuts to dangerous greenhouse gas pollution and said they would "seriously consider" the goal of halving global emissions by 2050.

The deal brokered by German Chancellor Angela Merkel was a compromise which she admitted fell short of her target of a binding agreement to slash carbon pollution, in the face of US opposition to any mandatory targets.

Merkel said she was "very satisfied" and British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the deal "a major, major step forward."

But global warming campaigners said it came up far too short.

"These goals are a joke," said anti-globalization group Attac, which organized days of noisy protests against the summit.

"The deal is clearly not enough to prevent dangerous climate change" said Daniel Mittler, climate policy advisor of Greenpeace International. "The US isolation in refusing to accept binding emission cuts has become blindingly obvious at this meeting."

"Chancellor Merkel and Prime Minister Blair are trying to portray this as a strong agreement. But President Bush didn't give them an inch," said Philip Clapp, president of the US National Environmental Trust. "The best they could get from him was a statement that their 50 percent-by-2050 emissions reduction proposal would be `seriously considered.' That's a pretty tiny landmark."

Yet many observers said the declaration opened a new chapter of international cooperation with Washington.

The UN's top official on climate change said the declaration was "everything I had hoped for" and suggested Washington had made significant concessions.

"Very recently, [the United States] indicated that it was too early, it was premature to begin negotiations on a post-2012 climate change regime, so that's a very clear shift," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations' Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The European media were overwhelmingly positive in their take on the pact.

"When the politicians pronounced a `successful deal' on climate change at the G8 summit yesterday, they were naturally putting a positive gloss on an agreement which is still a long way from an iron-clad commitment to reduce greenhouse gases," the Times of London said.

"What matters is that America has clearly come in from the cold," the Times said.

"Considering the point where they started, the compromise of the G8 summit is more than has been achieved in years of trying to achieve effective climate protection," Berlin's center-left daily Tagesspiegel wrote.

"This success is thanks to Angela Merkel and her tenacity and the pressure of the American public," the paper said.
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