In recent months, China has taken center stage in the international debate over global warming. It has surpassed the United States as the world's largest source of greenhouse gases, and it became developing nations' diplomatic champion at the recent United Nations climate negotiations in Bali. Now China may become the target of a full-fledged trade war that could destroy

Japan and the European Union failed to agree on Wednesday on a "mid-term' target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but will go into the G8 talks this summer with a closely matched position that contrasts sharply with that of the US. The governments agreed that national "mid-term' emission cutting targets should be set, but Japan was unwilling to specify a year. The EU has agreed to cut its emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, and had urged Japan to agree the same. Both sides agree that emissions should be halved by 2050, in line with scientific warnings on climate change.

Mountain pine beetles that are destroying forests along much of the Rocky Mountain range are doing so much damage that they may affect climate change, Canadian researchers reported on Wednesday. The damage is nearly equivalent to the polluting effects of forest fires, they report in the journal Nature.

Agreement on a new climate change treaty could run the risk of failure at talks in Copenhagen next year if governments do not narrow their differences, a top UN environmental official said yesterday. The result of this month's talks in Bangkok to discuss commitments to a road map for battling global warming did not bode well in the run-up to the 2009 meeting, said Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

Japan's environment minister yesterday criticised George W. Bush's plan to minimise greenhouse emissions, saying the US president's ambitions "fell far short" of expectations. Reacting to Mr Bush's pledge to halt the growth of US carbon emissions by 2025, Ichiro Kamoshita said: "Truthfully, I want the US to tackle the issue of global warming more proactively." Japan, which hosts the Group of Eight summit in Hokkaido in July, wants to forge a compromise between the US and Europe on the one hand and big developing countries, particularly China and India, on the other.

Following a one-day meeting in Tokyo, the business federation chiefs issued a joint statement urging the G8 nations to come up with measures that will encourage developing countries to participate in the framework to succeed Kyoto. "We hope there will be a forward-looking agreement on such points," said Fujio Mitarai, chief of the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) and chairman and CEO of Canon Inc. Mitarai also said the business chiefs briefly discussed the sectoral approach Japan proposed that has so far only received mixed reactions.

President George W Bush's plan to stop the growth of global warming emissions is bound to be part of his chequered environmental legacy, a record roundly criticized by conservation groups and political opponents. The broad outlines of the plan call for letting US carbon dioxide emissions peak in 2025, but offer no specifics on how to get there. Bush rejected new taxes, more trade barriers or abandoning nuclear power while focusing on emissions from the power industry.

Greenhouse gas curbs on industries such as steel and cement could help a UN-led drive to fight global warming despite fears they would be hard to implement, delegates at a US-led conference said on Wednesday. Developing nations objected at the 17-nation talks that such sectoral industrial schemes might throttle their inefficient energy-intensive businesses and said the burden for curbs should fall instead on rich nations.

Developing nations objected on Wednesday to possible curbs on greenhouse gases produced by industries such as steel or cement, telling US-led climate talks that too strict standards could throttle their companies. Other countries expressed worries that such targets, championed by Japan as a possible element of a planned new UN climate treaty beyond 2012, should only be a complement to big cuts in emissions of gases led by industrial nations.