L'Aquila (Italy): US President Barack Obama said on Thursday the world had made "important strides" towards arresting climate change by agreeing to limit warming, but UN chief Ban Ki-moon said it was simply not enough.
"This is politically and morally (an) imperative and historic responsibility ... for the future of humanity, even for the future of the planet Earth," said Ban.
Major economies meeting in Italy agreed to restrict global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) -- a development that was unthinkable 12 months ago, before Obama was elected president of the world's second biggest greenhouse gas emitter.
But the Group of Eight rich nations failed to persuade top emitter China and India to join in a push to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent by 2050 -- a blow to efforts to secure a new UN pact by year end.
Canada and Russia appeared to turn their back on the G8's stated aim of cutting its emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 within 24 hours of it being announced.
In Washington, there was a setback for Obama's global warming bill when the committee pushing it forward suspended work on it until after the Congress recess ends in September -- raising doubts whether it can be delivered in time for Obama to present it at December's UN climate summit in Copenhagen.
Obama, at his first meeting of Group of Eight leaders, said the "days are over" when his country fell "short of meeting our responsibilities" on greenhouse gas emissions.
"Ice sheets are melting, sea levels are rising, our oceans are becoming more acidic and we have already seen its effects on weather patterns our food and water sources and our habitats."
"Every nation on this planet is at risk and just as no one nation is responsible for climate change, no one nation can address it alone."
Obama said he understood China and India's qualms about reducing energy consumption when rich industrial powers had "a much larger carbon footprint per capita".
"They want to make sure that they do not have to sacrifice their aspirations for development and higher living standards," Obama told reporters at the G8 summit in L'Aquila in Italy.
"Yet with most of the growth in projected emissions coming from these countries, their active participation is a prerequisite for a solution," said the American president.
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Moral imperative
But while the president said the Italian summit constituted progress towards a new UN climate change treaty being signed in Copenhagen in December, UN Secretary-General Ban said bluntly that progress at the G8 was "not enough".
The G8 -- United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Russia -- set itself what Canada called an "aspirational goal" of cutting rich nations' emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 and halving global emissions by 50 per cent.
They got emerging powers like China, India and Brazil to try to limit global warming to 2 degrees from pre-industrial levels, in the context of temperature rises of about 0.7 Celsius since the Industrial Revolution began widespread use of fossil fuels.
India said developing countries wanted the G8 to provide financing to help them cope with ever more floods, heatwaves, storms and rising sea levels. They also want to see rich nations make deeper cuts in their own emissions by 2020.
Economy, currencies, trade
On the first day of the summit the G8 acknowledged there are still risks to financial stability from the economic crisis, but tough new rules for global business and finance will be left to the broader G20 meeting in Pittsburgh in September.
Ahead of development talks on Friday that include leaders of nine African nations, including Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, plus international food and farming aid agencies, the G8 was likely to pledge $15 billion to a US-led plan on food security.
Rich nations and developing powers also agreed to kick-start the stalled Doha round of world trade talks and conclude them by 2010. Launched in 2001 to help poor countries prosper, the Doha round has stumbled on proposed tariff and subsidy cuts.
There was some tension between the G8 and developing powers over China's decision to present its argument -- supported by Russia, India and Brazil -- for long-term diversification of the global reserve currency system away from reliance on the dollar.
This is a sensitive issue on currency markets -- and also for Beijing, which holds an estimated 70 per cent of its $1.95 trillion in official foreign exchange reserves in the dollar.
But, while Chinese State Councillor Dai Bingguo did not name the dollar and Beijing has been wary of saying anything to undermine the US currency, China did call for a "diversified" system to help the stability of currency reserves.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown stressed than any such debate had to be long-term to avoid destabilising markets while leaders focus on pulling the world out of recession.
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