G-8 leaders set broad goals to reduce global warming

President Obama and leaders of seven other world economic powers agreed Wednesday to broad goals for reducing global warming, but they stopped well short of measures that environmentalists call critical to stopping the problem and also failed to get developing nations such as China and India to go along. The Group of Eight industrial democracies agreed to a statement setting the goal of holding global warming to an increase of 2 degrees Celsius — 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit — by 2020, as measured since the dawn of the industrial age in 1900. They also set a long-range target of cutting emissions of greenhouse gases that cause warming by 50 percent worldwide and by 80 percent among industrialized nations by 2050. Obama and the other leaders, however, didn't discuss prominent proposals urging a timetable for quicker emission cuts by 2020...McClatchy