Climate changes at climate talks

The willingness of the world's richest industrialized nations to adopt greenhouse gas reduction targets has to be seen as a big improvement, even if the actual proposed cutbacks are not too large and not too fast. Hopefully, this is only the beginning. The agreement reached Tuesday by G-8 leaders to cut greenhouse gas emissions by half in the next 40 years. China, India and four other fast-growing nations, the source of much of the new pollution, are expected to join the talks Wednesday. While the agreement, which lacks some vital details, was praised by the richest nations, it was panned by environmentalists, who called it inadequate. But U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said such an agreement was mandatory because time was running out for stopping global warming. Leaders must draft a new treaty to succeed the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The United States has refused to ratify Kyoto.