L'Aquila, Italy - The world's richest powers reached a landmark deal with India, China and other major polluters on the need to limit global warming to 2 degrees centigrade so as to prevent catastrophic consequences to the climate, diplomatic sources said Thursday. The leaders of the Major Economies Forum (MEF) of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United States, Brazil, China, India, Mexico, South Africa, Australia, Indonesia and South Korea gave their broad backing to the goal ahead of opening formal talks in the Italian town of L'Aquila.
On Wednesday, Group of Eight leaders gave their first formal endorsement to the 2-degree goal long advocated by scientists. To reach this objective, they said world emissions should be halved by 2050 and pledged to cut their pollution by 80 per cent by the same deadline.
G8 host Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, had called on the MEF to endorse those goals as the foundations of an international deal on fighting climate change at United Nations talks in Copenhagen in December.
However, no deal was likely to be reached on specific greenhouse gas emission cuts by the MEF during the Group of Eight summit in L'Aquila, Italy, sources said.
Sources close to the negotiations nevertheless hailed Thursday's breakthrough as "the start of joint progress" towards Copenhagen.
Denmark, which will host the UN talks in December to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, was also attending the talks in L'Aquila.
