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WASHINGTON, DC, February 21, 2007 (ENS) - Senior legislators from the world's eight largest industrialized countries and five key emerging economies are shaping their policy statements on global warming in advance of this year's G8 Summit in June at the Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm, Germany. Germany currently holds the Presidency of the G8 group of nations.
For two days last week, the lawmakers convened in the U.S. Congress for the Legislators Forum on Climate Change and Energy Security.
The forum was part of the G8+5 Climate Change Legislators Dialogue in which more than 80 legislators and government officials from the 20 largest energy consuming countries participated.
The participation of five emerging economies - China, India, South Africa, Mexico, and Brazil - is important because they are some of the greatest greenhouse gas polluters, and their involvement in reducing emissions is crucial to success in limiting global warming.
They joined representatives of the G8 countries - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Leaders from the private sector and civil society also joined the discussion, along with U.S. Senators and Representatives from both political parties.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed the forum, saying in a video message, "The impact of climate change affects industrialized countries and emerging economies to the same extent. Protecting our economic future through innovation, energy efficiency and renewable energies is a global challenge."
There is, therefore, a good chance that we will finally find a common basis for global climate protection," the chancellor said. "I have made this one of the priorities of the German EU and G8 Presidencies."
"I'll be looking for fundamental answers on how we can prevent global warming of the Earth's atmosphere from rising more than 2°C Celsius and how we can guarantee our energy supplies in the long term," she said.
The EU wants to limit global warming to no more than 2°C above the temperature in pre-industrial times.
Beyond the 2°C increase, scientists suggest there is a tipping point beyond which they predict catastrophic environmental and economic events such as the loss of 95 percent of coral reefs, irreversible damage to the world's major forests, and sea level rise that threatens human life, property, and whole societies.
But the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released earlier this month warned that temperatures might rise far further.
Global surface temperatures have increased about 0.6°C since the late 19th century, and about 0.3°C over the past 25 years.
Chancellor Merkel said that at the upcoming G8 Summit she wants to highlight three elements of a climate strategy - a global and ambitious increase in energy efficiency, renewable energies and CO2-free power plants, and efficient economic incentives through a global carbon market.
The Legislators Forum on Climate Change ended Thursday with a statement endorsed by all participants and sent to Chancellor Merkel. They called for greenhouse gas emissions targets to be set by 2009 for the period after the current Kyoto Protocol targets expire in 2012.
The protocol is an international agreement under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC.
"In order to ensure that the long term goal is met," the Legislators Forum said in its statement, "we urge G8 and +5 governments when they meet at the G8 Summit in Heiligendamm, to agree on the key elements of a post-2012 framework and to urge that global negotiations on such a framework be launched at the Bali meeting of the UNFCCC in November, to be concluded by 2009."
All of the G8 countries, with the exception of the United States, are legally bound under the UNFCCC's Kyoto Protocol to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change by an average of 5.2 percent by 2012. But no emissions targets have been agreed upon after that date.
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