The Group of Eight industrialized nations on Tuesday endorsed halving global emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 and called on individual countries to set goals reducing their own emissions much earlier, Japan's prime minister said. "The G-8 nations came to a mutual recognition that this target — cutting global emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050 — should be a global target, " Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said. The G-8 has been under pressure to secure commitments by wealthy nations to push forward stalled U.N.-led talks on forging a new accord to battle global warming by the end of next year, the Associated Press reported. The G-8 countries — the United States, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Britain, Canada and Italy — pledged last year at a summit in Germany to seriously consider the same target. The Japanese hosts of this year's summit had hoped to solidify that commitment at the meeting in Toyako, northern Japan. "We confirmed at the Toyako summit that for the world this long-term target is a just and necessary target, " Fukuda said.
