Big challenges at Bush's last G-8
Disputes over global warming, worries about soaring oil prices and uncertainty about Iran and North Korea's nuclear ambitions pose daunting challenges for Bush when he sits down with presidents and prime ministers Monday.
There are fewer than 200 days left in his term, and Bush's dwindling presidency is a major factor hanging over the meetings involving leaders from Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada at a Group of Eight summit in Toyako, on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.
With Bush en route to Japan on a nonstop flight Saturday, there was a mix of high challenges and low expectations for the summit.
Atop the agenda is reaching a deal that would set targets for reducing the pollution that causes global warming. But few expect major headway or concessions from Bush. He insists on holding China and India, fast-growing economies and among the world's biggest polluters, to the same emission-reduction standards as older, developed economies.
Japan's prime minister, Yasuo Fukuda, would like to emerge with an agreement on 50 percent overall reductions in greenhouse gases by 2050.
Bush planned a pre-summit meeting and news conference today with Fukuda. On the sidelines of the G-8 meeting, Bush also scheduled separate meetings over the next few days with the leaders of Germany, China, South Korea, Russia and India.
Michael A. Levy, director of energy security and climate change at the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based think tank, said he did not expect breakthroughs on global warming, in part because other G-8 members realize that Bush's days in office were dwindling.
The Japanese, who are driving the agenda and favor strong emission-reduction targets, "acutely understand there is going to be a different American approach to climate change in a year," Levy said.
Both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain have argued for stronger standards for reducing greenhouse gas emissions than those advocated by Bush.
"We'll have a new U.S. president in office. The expectation is that either McCain or Obama would be a little bit more forward-leaning and we could make some more headway," said Julianne Smith, director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The United Nations began negotiations late last year on a climate change pact to take over when the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol — which the United States has not ratified — expires at the end of 2012. Negotiators face a deadline of December 2009, when some 190 nations will meet in Denmark.
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