G-8 leaders focus on global warming

U.S. President Barack Obama will lead the Major Economies Forum at the Group of Eight meetings in L'Aquila.

The forum is a climate-centered group whose members represent the G-8 nations -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- along with Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa. Those nations account for 80 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

Thursday's session follows a pledge by G-8 leaders the night before, to seek huge cuts in emissions and sets the stage for the possibility of an all-encompassing agreement at a major environmental summit in December in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The leaders said they would "join a global response to achieve a 50 percent reduction in global emissions by 2050, and to a goal of an aggregate 80 percent or more reduction by developed countries by that date."