Australian minister welcomes G-8 climate agreement

Only when all major polluters joined in a climate accord greenhouse gas emission targets should not be binding said Australia's environment minister, satisfied with g-8 summit’s achievement.

Leaders from the Group of Eight developed countries, holding an annual summit in Germany, clinched a broad agreement Thursday to try halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 - a proposal the European Union, Japan and Canada had lobbied for.

Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull welcomed the accord as a step away from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that set mandatory greenhouse reduction targets for developed countries but not fast-growing polluters like China and India.

"What we've seen is an acknowledgment by the world's largest developed economies that the old Kyoto approach has failed, and that we need a new Kyoto - one that is able to achieve a massive cut in global greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century," Turnbull told Sky News. "And to do that we will need the commitments from all the major emitting countries, including those developing countries like China and India."