President Barack Obama proclaimed a new day for U.S. policy on climate change early Thursday, declaring, "In the past, the United States has sometimes fallen short of meeting our responsibilities. So let me be clear: Those days are over."

But by day's end, world leaders wrapped up climate talks at a familiar impasse.

Leaders of the Group of Eight nations declined prompt action to curb greenhouse gas emissions in favor of the high-sounding goal of reducing their own emissions by 80 percent and worldwide emissions by 50 percent by 2050 -- without pledging to take any specific steps to get there. China, India and other major developing countries, who had wanted action in the next decade, reacted by rejecting the G-8 package.

And a side meeting that Obama convened Thursday to bring together the developing and developed nations most responsible for greenhouse emissions ended with only general pronouncements.

The discussions yielded a consensus declaration that the world should try to limit warming to 3.6 degrees, a level scientists say would minimize the dangers of the most catastrophic warming effects.

The United States and seven other of the world's top economic powers agreed Wednesday to broad goals for reducing global warming, but hedged on timetable details and expected to fail to get developing nations such as China and India to go along.

The Group of Eight industrial democracies agreed to a statement setting the goal of holding global warming to an increase of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by 2020, as measured since the dawn of the industrial age in 1900.

They also reaffirmed a pledge to cut emissions of greenhouse gases that cause warming -- by 50% worldwide and by 80% among industrialized nations -- by 2050. They hedged, however, on when to set the starting point to measure those cuts, saying they would measure from 1990 "or later years."

And they didn't adopt anything committing to specific emission cuts by 2020, a top goal of environmentalists.

Moreover, they acknowledged that their draft declaration for a larger meeting today, when China, India and other developing nations join, will not include targets for emissions cuts.
Progress toward treaty

Aides to President Barack Obama said the G8 agreements marked important progress toward the broad target of an international treaty to cut emissions.

Michael Froman, the White House deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, said the leaders "pledged to confront the challenges of climate change."

Environmentalists called it a disappointment that fell short of what's needed.

"This was a missed opportunity," said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "The G8 countries are not putting a credible target on the table."

Scientists said the 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit limit -- which global warming already is near to hitting -- is critical, and that any additional warming beyond that would have grave consequences.

"The need for urgent action to address climate change is now indisputable," said a joint statement from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, along with counterpart agencies from around the world.

The NAS also urged that the international community commit to cutting the emissions of heat-trapping gases by 50% from 1990 levels by the year 2050.

The G8 agreed a year ago to set a target of a 50% cut by 2050, but it didn't stipulate whether the cut would be measured from 1990 or from the much higher levels in 2005. The leaders hedged again Wednesday, saying the nonbinding cuts would be measured against "1990 or later years," Froman said.

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U.S. President Barack Obama told Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Thursday there was still time to close the gap on climate change issues between major industrialized and developing nations, the White House said.

Obama told Lula such progress could be made before the U.N. talks on a new climate change treaty to be held in Copenhagen in December, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters at the G8 summit following talks between the two presidents.

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President Barack Obama's chief climate-change negotiator said Sunday that the U.S. would be "powerfully, fervently engaged" in global talks to reduce carbon emissions but warned of a difficult path ahead.

Todd Stern, a Washington lawyer and former Clinton White House official, said at a UN conference in Bonn, Germany, that despite high expectations, Obama did not have a magic solution for fashioning a global climate-change treaty by year's end.

"We all have to do this together. We don't have a magic wand," he told reporters on the sidelines of the conference. "I don't think anybody should be thinking that the U.S. can ride in on a white horse and make it all work."

Stern did not offer specific policy proposals and acknowledged that Obama's negotiating team would be constricted by the domestic political challenge of winning approval from Congress. But his speech was greeted with sustained applause as many UN delegates and environmental groups celebrated the exit of the Bush administration, which had resisted proposals for binding reductions on carbon emissions.

"This is a new start for the U.S. delegation and the start of a new hope to solve the problem of climate change," Matthias Machnig, Germany's deputy minister of the environment, said in a speech at the conference.

UN delegates are trying to negotiate a global accord on the reduction of greenhouse gases in time for a December summit in Copenhagen. The accord would replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which called for many industrial nations to cut gas emissions but was rejected by the United States and a handful of other countries.

Many UN delegates want major cuts in greenhouse-gas production—25 percent to 40 percent below 1990 levels—by 2020.

Those cuts would be deeper than Obama's recently announced goal of reducing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions during that time frame by 16 percent from present levels. But Stern said more ambitious targets might not be politically or economically feasible.

"Let me speak frankly here: It is in no one's interest to repeat the experience of Kyoto by delivering an agreement that won't gain sufficient support at home," Stern told the delegates.

Stern also said that any global treaty would require deeper concessions from rising economic powers such as Brazil, India and China, the world's leading greenhouse-gas producer.