The G8 leaders meeting in Japan last week backed away from accepting realistic binding greenhouse gas limits. Adopting a attitude of denial about carbon emissions and in an attempt to coddle U.S. President George Bush during his waning days of office the major leaders of the Western World decided to fudge their math test.

They promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050 and for the first time since Kyoto the United States and Russia were on board.

Where the math goes awry is that there is no agreement that includes the developing nations who are currently and will increasingly introduce more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the developed nations do.

The growing economies of China, India, Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa are all powered by cheap energy sources, mostly coal. Even burning clean coal produces a lot of carbon dioxide and changing to other energy sources would be expensive and could mean slowing their economic development rates.

That is a price developing nations would unlikely be willing to pay.

The First world has been bletching carbon into the air since the industrial revolution and have enjoyed the economic riches that came with that unfettered use of the cheapest fuels available.

The developing nations are now just beginning to enjoy the economic riches of increased growth and have little patience for the Western world’s argument that they slow down and become Greener and more responsible.

In fact the developing nations are now responsible for an 85 percent increase in worldwide carbon emissions. And that is going to increase as those nations introduce more power systems into their economies. Both China and India each plan on introducing a new coal-fired power plant every three years from now until 2015. Each plant will have a life expectency of 40 to 50 years.

The developing nations are expected to increase the total world wide carbon total emission levels by 50 percent by the year 2050.

No one really expects that the G8 nations will muster the political resolve needed to meet their commitment of a 50 percent reduction of today’s carbon levels by 2050.

Most are already failing to meet the more lenient Kyoto goals they have agreed to. The EU and Japan are behind by 15 percent on their Kyoto commitments, Canada is way behind by nearly 30 percent.

So do the math.

G8 countries to decrease the current carbon levels by 50 percent by 2050, with little or no faith that they can come anywhere even close to that commitment. Developing nations to increase carbon emissions by 50 percent world wide by 2050 with little incentive to alter their plans for swift and substantial economic development.