Senior legislators from the world's eight largest industrialized countries and five key emerging economies are shaping their policy statements on global warming in advance of this year's G8 Summit in June at the Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm, Germany. Germany currently holds the Presidency of the G8 group of nations. For two days last week, the lawmakers convened in the U.S. Congress for the Legislators Forum on Climate Change and Energy Security. The forum was part of the G8+5 Climate Change Legislators Dialogue in which more than 80 legislators and government officials from the 20 largest energy consuming countries participated. The participation of five emerging economies - China, India, South Africa, Mexico, and Brazil - is important because they are some of the greatest greenhouse gas polluters, and their involvement in reducing emissions is crucial to success in limiting global warming.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed the forum, saying in a video message, "The impact of climate change affects industrialized countries and emerging economies to the same extent. Protecting our economic future through innovation, energy efficiency and renewable energies is a global challenge."..."I have made this one of the priorities of the German EU and G8 Presidencies."
Chancellor Merkel said that at the upcoming G8 Summit she wants to highlight three elements of a climate strategy - a global and ambitious increase in energy efficiency, renewable energies and CO2-free power plants, and efficient economic incentives through a global carbon market.

The Legislators Forum on Climate Change ended Thursday with a statement endorsed by all participants and sent to Chancellor Merkel. They called for greenhouse gas emissions targets to be set by 2009 for the period after the current Kyoto Protocol targets expire in 2012. The Legislators Forum said it expects the G8 and +5 governments to identify, at the G8 Summit in Heiligendamm, "a measurable long-term goal to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere."