KEVIN Rudd has warned world leaders they have 150 days to bite the bullet on climate change, after talks between environment ministers failed to break deadlocks threatening a global agreement at Copenhagen in December and G8 leaders managed only the vaguest consensus.

Speaking as he prepared for critical climate change talks with leaders of 17 wealthy and developing countries on the sidelines of the G8 meeting in the Italian town of L’Aquila, the Prime Minister was blunt about the stalled negotiations and the urgent need for a breakthrough.

On Wednesday, the G8 agreed to a long-term “goal” of reducing global emissions by 50 per cent by 2050, but Mr Rudd said that, if the Copenhagen negotiations were to succeed, there would have to be tough talk about the nearer term 2020 targets crucial to emissions trading schemes being developed around the world, including in Australia.

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“The key challenge is what can developed and developing nations do in terms of medium-term targets by 2020 and how can we reach agreement on that by the time we reach Copenhagen,” Mr Rudd said before attending the major economies forum meeting, to be chaired by US President Barack Obama.

“That is the real challenge and when we get to L’Aquila later today I would hope to be having that level of discussion with our friends from around the world.

“The clock is ticking on climate change and we can’t just shuffle around and hope that something falls out of trees. We have to actually land an outcome, our negotiators need fresh impetus, a fresh commissioning from their political leaders to try to forge an agreement.”

The G8 leaders were putting a positive spin on their climate change communique, claiming it represented an agreement to stop global warming at 2C.

In fact the communique said only that the leaders “recognised the broad scientific view” that global temperatures should not be allowed to climb more than 2C over pre-industrial levels and that rich countries could collectively reduce emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 as part of the global effort to achieve the 50 per cent cuts.

A draft of the communique set to be issued by the major economies leaders – obtained by The Australian – contains even vaguer language. “We recognise the scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2C. We will work between now and Copenhagen to identify a global goal for substantially reducing global emissions by 2050.”

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown hailed the deal as historic and claimed it laid the foundations for a successful Copenhagen deal. American officials called it a “step forward”.

But G8 member Russia quickly undermined it when President Dmitry Medvedev’s economic adviser said the 80 per cent emissions reductions would be impossible for Russia to achieve.

“For us, the 80 per cent figure is unacceptable and likely unattainable,” Arkady Dvorkovich said. “We won’t sacrifice economic growth for the sake of emission reduction.”

And both China and India have insisted the developed countries need to put medium-term cuts on the table before the developing countries commit to anything. “There have to be credible mid-term goals in the range of 25-40 per cent,” said Dinesh Patnaik, an Indian negotiator.

Both the Rudd government and the opposition have promised cuts of between 5 and 25 per cent by 2020, the higher targets conditional on the ambition of any global deal.

Mr Rudd said distant 2050 targets should not be the main game for the major economies forum, which includes the G8 and other countries, including China, India, Brazil and Australia.

Conservation groups said the aspiration to limit global warming was weakened by the absence of medium-term targets.