New G7 policy 'signals end of fossil fuels'

G7 leaders have agreed to phase out fossil fuel emissions this century, in a move described as "historic" by environmental campaigners.

At the meeting in Bavaria, leaders from the US, Germany, France, the UK, Japan, Canada and Italy declared that, in line with scientific findings, "deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions are required with a decarbonisation of the global economy over the course of this century".

They said they supported cutting greenhouse gases by between 40 per cent and 70 percent of 2010 levels by 2050 – the first time world leaders have endorsed such a precise target, says the Financial Times.

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In a third key development, the leaders also reaffirmed a pledge to mobilise $100bn a year from public and private sources to help poorer nations tackle climate change.

Greenpeace said the announcements signal the end of the age of fossil fuels. "The vision of a 100 per cent renewable energy future is starting to take shape while spelling out the end of coal," said a spokesman.

The World Resources Institute, a US environmental group, said: "This long-term decarbonisation goal will make evident to corporations and financial markets that the most lucrative investments will stem from low-carbon technologies."

However, Tim Gore, Oxfam's spokesman on climate change, was sceptical of the finance pledge. "Developing countries need a credible financial road map, not a set of accounting tricks," he said. "Currently rich countries provide just two per cent of what poor countries need to adapt to a changing climate."

Tom Arup, the environment editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, writes that the fossil fuels announcement is not binding and instead "largely symbolic".

The burning of fossil fuels releases CO2 into the atmosphere, the greenhouse gas that scientists say is most responsible for warming global temperatures to potentially perilous levels.