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Election likely to reset Japan climate target
Tokyo (AFP) Aug 21, 2009 When Japan elects its next government this month, climate change campaigners will be watching closely to see which party takes the levers of power in the world's second-largest economy. Japan drew scorn from environmentalists when Prime Minister Taro Aso in June announced a greenhouse gas reduction target of eight percent from 1990 levels by 2020 -- far below the European Union pledge of a 20 percent cut. Activists mocked Japan's conservative premier as "George W. Aso" and charged that the Asian industrial powerhouse would worsen global warming and speed the pace of melting ice caps, rising sea levels and changing weather patterns. Environmental group Greenpeace accused Aso of kowtowing to Japan Inc's heavy industry, calculating that Aso's goal could help doom the earth to catastrophic warming of three degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit). The man who is now seen likely to replace Aso in the top job after the August 30 vote, Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) leader Yukio Hatoyama, has promised a more ambitious target -- a 25 percent cut by 2020. Hatoyama's centre-left DPJ has enjoyed a strong poll lead over Aso's business-friendly Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) which has ruled Japan for more than 50 years except for one 10-month stint in opposition. Japanese environmentalists have cheered the DPJ target, which Japan would present at international talks in Copenhagen in December aimed at agreeing a follow-up treaty to the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012. "I hope for a change of government," said Yurika Ayukawa, a green activist and professor at the Osaka University Research Institute for Sustainability Science. "If the LDP stays in office, nothing will change." "Japan needs a drastic change in its policy on climate change," she told AFP, suggesting the next government introduce environmental taxes and compulsory emission cut targets for Japan's massive corporate sector. Conservation group WWF has argued that the issue of climate change could help swing the election, especially among the large number of undecided voters, estimated in some surveys at up to a third of the electorate. The WWF said that a recent survey, commissioned by global campaign network Avaaz, found that 50 percent of respondents supported the DPJ's 25 percent target against 29 percent for Aso's eight percent target. But the numbers can be misleading, experts warn. While the DPJ's target -- like those of the United States and EU -- includes gains from carbon-trading schemes and reforestation, the LDP's figure does not. Shuzo Nishioka, a senior researcher at the National Institute for Environmental Studies, said if carbon trading and tree-planting were excluded, the DPJ's goal would drop to a 15 percent cut. LDP-ruled Japan has long argued that the country, the world's fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has already achieved a highly energy-efficient lifestyle and industrial infrastructure. Aso's government has this year promoted hybrid car technology through incentive schemes, which have helped make Toyota's Prius the top-selling passenger car on the Japanese market in recent months. It has also pledged to increase solar power generation in Japan 20-fold by 2020 and 40-fold a decade later. On the other side, the DPJ, despite its tougher mid-term greenhouse gas reduction target, has also made campaign promises likely to raise some pollutant loads in the atmosphere. One of its key pledges is to abolish expressway tolls and special car taxes. A group called the Coalition of Local Government for the Environment Initiative estimates that scrapping road tolls and cutting car taxes will result in an annual increase of at least 9.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. Nishioka, who sat on the expert panel that calculated Japan's target announced in June, said "there is some ambivalence in the DPJ's policies on climate change, such as the free expressways." "As a scientist I want the new government, whether it is led by the LDP or the DPJ, to do more to cut emissions," he said. "Our scientific studies show Japan can technically cut emissions by 25 percent by 2020 even if it excludes carbon trading and planting forests." Share This Article With Planet Earth
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