The world’s leading industrial nations took important steps toward reducing carbon emissions at the recent Group of Eight (G8) meeting in Italy, but most of the hard work involved in making concrete progress still lies ahead.
The declaration signed at L’Aquila, Italy, marked the first time that the United States, Canada, Japan and Russia signed on to a climate policy already endorsed by the European Union (EU), The Economist magazine reports.
The statement, which also won support from many developing nations who attended the conference, asserts that global temperatures not be allowed to rise by more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
In addition, the G8 nations also agreed to reduce their own carbon emissions by at least 80 percent by mid-century.
While the Economist called the agreement a “useful step” ahead of the United Nation’s climate change summit set to take place in Copenhagen in December, it added that “hitting the target will be much harder than agreeing on it”.
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