COLUMNISTS I once asked a Japanese environment minister how she thought Japan could meet its obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. Her answer – rather long and rambling, as I recall – involved something called a furoshiki, a traditional Japanese cloth and symbol of Japan’s abhorrence of waste, used to carry shopping home in lieu of a plastic bag.
This was quite a big claim for a little piece of material, no matter how recyclable or exquisitely decorated. Under Kyoto, Japan has pledged to cut its carbon emissions by 6 per cent from 1990 levels. But current emissions are running 8 per cent above that mark. Short of ramming furoshiki down the smoke stacks of the biggest industrial polluters, it is hard to see its adoption making much of a dent in Japanese emissions.
Aiming at Japanese households misses the real target. Japanese industry accounts for roughly 34 per cent of direct emissions with power companies adding a further 30 per cent of emissions.
That Japan can offer up nothing more serious – save closing some of the shortfall by buying carbon credits – damages its aspirations to be in the vanguard of fighting climate change. Unlike its aspirations for a greater international military presence, which raise suspicions among neighbours, climate change is an issue where Japan could easily be more assertive.
Tokyo is putting itself forward, not entirely implausibly, as a bridge between the far-flung positions of Europe, which favours a mandatory cap-and-trade system, the US, and the big emitters in the developing world. It argues, rightly, that if the post-Kyoto framework is to mean anything, it must include the US, China and India, the world’s first, second and fifth biggest polluters. (Japan sneaks in at number four.)
Tokyo wants to use this year’s presidency of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations to press for a more practical framework to replace Kyoto when it runs out in 2013. The process was launched last year by shortlived prime minister Shinzo Abe – if only Japan’s carbon footprint were as light as his political one – in the jauntily titled Cool Earth 50. That set a target of cutting global carbon emissions in half by 2050 and putting energy-saving technology, in which Japan excels, centre stage.
Yet Cool Earth 50 is little more than “Kyoto-light”, shorn of the mandatory targets that made the protocol so noteworthy. Behind the back-peddling is the bitterness of Japanese industry, which felt betrayed by the commitments its politicians made at Kyoto. Setting such ambitious goals for carbon reduction, industry said, failed to take into account the giant strides in energy conservation it had already made after the 1970s oil shocks. By 1990, Kyoto’s baseline, Japan was already streets ahead.
Seduced by the fact that Kyoto bore a Japanese imprimatur, its politicians may indeed have given too much away. They looked particularly daft when the US backed out of the protocol altogether. Japan’s industry, however, is not quite as virtuous as it imagines. Partly through lack of investment during the growth-free 1990s, it has gone sideways, or even backwards, since then. Industry in other countries is catching up. According to WWF Japan, UK business may actually have surpassed Japan’s energy-efficiency levels. The power sector also uses more coal than it used to, a tendency exacerbated by recent accident-induced stoppages at nuclear power plants.
Unless it employs some sleight of hand or splashes out billions of dollars on carbon credits, Japan is almost certain to miss its Kyoto targets. That raises the suspicion that Cool Earth 50 – devoid of any medium-term commitments – is a gambit to let it off the hook. It is also a gift to a Bush administration averse to promising anything concrete.
Japan must produce something better by the time it hosts the G8 summit in July. As some of its officials are quietly admitting, the debate has moved on. Since Cool Earth 50 was launched, the consensus about global warming has hardened, as has Europe’s conviction about the necessity of mandatory targets. Australia, under Kevin Rudd, has ratified the Kyoto Protocol. And the next US administration might be prepared to make stronger commitments.
Japan is in danger of misreading the political climate. That is a shame because it could, indeed, be a leader. Some of its energy-saving technology – hybrid cars, solar panels, fuel cells – is world class. Its recycling regulations are pioneering. Some small towns are even powered by recycled rubbish. Its public transport, which accounts for 47 per cent of all human movement, is rightly envied. Even its claim to hold sway with China has some merit given the recent diplomatic thaw and China’s admiration of Japanese technology.
But Japan must lead from the front, even if that means making commitments other countries cannot yet match and upsetting its industrial lobby. By stressing technology, it can demonstrate how championing the environment can boost, rather than break, Japanese industry.
Over the next months, Tokyo should announce fresh emissions targets for 2020, far more credible than commitments to a vague goal nearly half a century away. It should also give a plausible explanation of how it can meet its existing Kyoto obligations. That would give Japan the moral authority to play the bridging role it craves. The furoshiki is a nice idea. But it is no substitute for a credible national policy.
