Brazil demands compromise from rich countries against global warming

Brazil will continue demanding greater compromises from the developed countries in the fight against global warming. Brazil also demands greater compromises regarding the recognition of historical responsibilities by the industrialized world on these issues, government sources said on Thursday.

The leaders from the Group of Eight (G8) met in L'Aquila, Italy, on Wednesday. In a communiqu, they said that their aim was to reduce 80 percent of their emissions of polluting gases by 2050, while global emissions should be reduced by 50 percent.

Yet the leaders from the Group of Five (G5) -- Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa -- questioned the G8 resolution and rejected the imposition of aims that would adversely affect their development and fight against poverty.

Brazilian chief negotiator on environmental issues Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Machado said that the goal set by the G8 "does not have credibility" and that it is unacceptable if there is not an intermediate goal by 2020.

Figueiredo Machado said that it is more difficult for developing countries to cut gas emissions because they are still fighting against social delay. According to Figueiredo Machado, the expansion of electric energy networks to the towns, for example, entails more emissions because of an increase in consumption.

The developed countries are the main holders of the financial and technological resources needed to alleviate the climate change, so "they must be the vanguard," Brazil's President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva recently said in an article.

Brazil's position is continuing to demand greater responsibility on behalf of the developed countries in the effort to reduce polluting gas emissions, sources from the Brazilian Foreign Ministry told Xinhua on Thursday.

The 15th Conference of the Parts from the Climate Convention will meet on December 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark, to seek a new agreement to combat climate change.

However, the rich countries' lack of compromise to set goals for the next 10 years puts the possibility of reaching an agreement in December at risk.

Experts said that it is necessary to impede the planet's warming by more than two degrees Celsius. Not doing so would have disastrous consequences for life on Earth.

To slow down global warming, it is fundamental that the developed nations reduce between 25 and 40 percent of their gas emissions by 2020, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.