The G8 works about as efficiently as the U.N. when it comes to formulating the groundwork for a post-Kyoto agreement, which is to say that most meetings end with officials agreeing to meet again. At this rate, the December 2009 Copenhagen Summit won't end until spring 2010 or so.

The latest example comes from Kobe, Japan, a city famous for its beef and less famous for holding contentious three-day meetings of Group of Eight environment ministers, like the one that wrapped up today. The meetings were intended to set the stage for July's G8 summit in Tokyo, where officials have made climate change the center of the agenda.

While the G8 ministers managed to agree that GHG emissions should be cut in half by mid-century, they failed to reach any consensus on the far more important short-term goals, despite pressure from the U.N. and other non-G8 European countries. Most European countries support emissions cuts of between 25 percent to 40 percent by 2020.

Alas, the best that G8 ministers could do regarding short-term solutions was to issue a statement about the need to set such targets ... eventually. They did appear pleased with their success at setting the 2050 target: "We made a step here today, a small one, but a very important one," said German environment minister Matthias Machnig. But he also warned of trouble down the road, saying "Without a mandatory midterm target for developing countries, it will be very difficult to get agreement"

Asked about setting short and midterm goals, the U.S. representative in Kobe, Scott Fulton, sounded like a man who thinks Copenhagen is 18 years, not 18 months, away: "At this point, I'm not sure if it's appropriate for us to cite specific figures."

Now is probably a good time to mention that Fulton is one the three G8 representatives not pictured in the above photo of officials dressed in Japanese garb. President Bush must have been disappointed.