Climate change likely to be top issue at Italy summit

WASHINGTON — One question could dominate this week's gathering of the world's top economic powers in Italy: Will the United States and Europe act by themselves to cut emissions of the heat-trapping gases that are causing long-term global warming and will they be able to persuade fast-developing nations such as China and India to go along?

President Barack Obama will lead a gathering of nations called the Major Economies Forum, looking to forge a consensus for a global pact to stop global warming ahead of a climate meeting in December in Copenhagen.

Obama will arrive Wednesday in Italy reportedly prepared to embrace the broad goal of limiting global warming to an increase of 2 degrees Celsius — 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit — in the global average temperature since the dawn of the industrial age. Many scientists see 2 degrees Celsius as a dangerous threshold that shouldn't be crossed.

Obama also will arrive at the Wednesday-Friday meeting in L'Aquila, Italy, armed with the tentative promise of U.S. action to cut its own emissions, a dramatic shift after years of opposition by the Bush administration. The House of Representatives has passed legislation that would put the first mandatory limits on U.S. emissions and reduce them if it becomes law.

However, the president faces a challenge winning Senate approval even for a proposal that environmentalists call watered down and Europeans consider short of what is needed. Even if the core group that is meeting in Italy — the world's eight top economic powers, called the G-8 — agrees to the goal of curbing global warming, it will still find major countries such as China reluctant to sign on to specific emission cuts.

"It is premature to expect any major breakthroughs on contentious issues like targets for emissions reduction," said Sarah Ladislaw, an energy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a center-right research center in Washington.

Still, White House aides said Obama hoped that the Major Economies Forum, a gathering of economic powers that produce roughly 80 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, would build momentum toward an international pact in which all nations take action to fight global warming, though not all in the same way or on the same timetable.

"Obviously bolstered by the great progress in the House last week, the president will chair that meeting and press for continued progress on energy and climate," said Denis McDonough, the president's deputy national security adviser for strategic communications.