Proposal for 50% cut in emissions by 2050

WEALTHY nations would commit to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade, and the world should strive to nearly eliminate them – or at least cut them in half – by 2050 under a draft text circulated yesterday at the UN climate talks.

The document pulled together the main elements of a global pact that 192nations have been negotiating for two years, but left numbers on financing and cutting greenhouse gas emissions – perhaps the most contentious bargaining points of the agreement – for world leaders to hammer out next week.

The draft was meant to focus attention on the broad goals the world must achieve to avoid irreversible change in climate that scientists say could bring many species to extinction and cause upheavals in the human environment in many parts of the Earth.