Globe and Mail

Hopes have dimmed for stronger action on climate change – a central goal of this week’s G8 summit in Japan – with countries such as the United States and Canada resisting calls for the group to set hard midterm targets for reducing emissions.

There’s a sense here that, besides some modest steps, leaders are already looking beyond this summit to next year’s UN climate-change talks, and the successor to U.S. President George W. Bush.

Environmental groups and European groups had called for the G8 to set midterm targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020.