Measures relying on business circles cannot stop global warming: JCP Ichida

Japan Press Weekly

Japan Press Service Co., Ltd. is the only news agency providing information of progressive, democratic movements in Japan

Measures relying on business circles cannot stop global warming: JCP Ichida

A bill to revise the 1998 Law Concerning the Promotion of the Measures to Cope with Global Warming was approved by the House of Councilors committee on environment on June 5.

The Japanese Communist Party voted against the bill.

Prior to the vote on the bill, the JCP proposed amendments to the bill but was rejected.

JCP Secretariat Head Ichida Tadayoshi at the committee meeting stated, “The bill needs to be revised to include specific mid- and long-term goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Ichida warned that even the miniscule 6-percent reduction in gas emissions, which Japan promised under the Kyoto Protocol, will not be achieved under the government bill because the government policy relies on the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren)’s “voluntary” measures.

Reliance on Nippon Keidanren’s marginal efforts to curb gas emissions explains why Japan is reluctant to present mid- and long-term goals, he added.

Ichida pointed out that the government bill to revise the law, pressed by utility and other civil industries, will not be able to enforce CO2 emissions cuts in the industrial sectors.

The JCP’s amendment proposal calls for curbing the rise in global temperature to within two degrees from the pre-industrial temperature by setting a 30-percent cut as the mid-term goal by 2020 and a 80-percent cut as the long-term goal by 2050, as warming gas emission cuts against 1990 levels.

In order to achieve these targets, the JCP proposes to include the following steps: concluding an emission reduction agreement between the government and industrial sectors and introducing a domestic emission trading system, so that a drastic gas cut will be achieved by industrial sectors, whose gas emissions constitutes 80 percent of Japan’s total amount of CO2. - Akahata, June 6, 2008