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TODAY Tuesday 7 October 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
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TODAY Tuesday 7 October 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site. |
TODAY IN THE WORLD: Japan The Genial Host
Kyoto is the site for the big international conference on climate change in December, and yesterday the Japanese government served notice that its principal objective was to ensure that the conference produced a treaty that gets signed by all the major players.
The Japanese proposal would set a goal for developed countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions five percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Not nearly so bold as the position of the European Union -- 15% cut by 2010 -- the Japanese propsal is also hedged with qualifications, reports Linda Sieg in Planet Ark:
"Countries would be able to trim that target if their 1990 emissions per unit of gross domestic product were less than other developed nations, if their 1990 emissions per capita were less or if their population growth rate from 1990 to 1995 was higher."
Journalists with calculators quickly figured that the exemptions would mean that the United States and Japan (for example) would be obliged to reduce their emissions by about three percent, not five percent.
The Japanese proposal is imprecise as to the degree of obligation that would be incurred by the signatories. How binding are the targets? "That is still a question we need to elaborate and we need to negotiate,"said Kiyotaka Akasaka, the suave spokesman with the awkward title of Deputy-Director General, Multilateral Cooperation Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Akasaka also announced that Japan would favor emissions trading (a key plank of any Clinton Administration platform). The Japanese press , meanwhile, ran a leaked story that over the weekend officials from the US, Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand agreed to seek explicit targets for developing countries as well as developed countries (a key domestic political requirement of the Clinton Administration).
Euros and enviros howled. "This is not nearly ambitious enough," said the Danish spokesman for the European Commission. "There is absolutely no time to waste." "The proposal is an international disgrace," said the Greenpeace spokesman. The spokesman fro the World Wildlife Fund called the proposal "life threatening."
Meanwhile, back in the American political jungle, Bill Clinton was hosting a climate conference at Georgetown, where he uplifted his audience with a show of commitment but prepared them for the inevitable disappointment s of a half-loaf agreement (see Bill McKibben for a first-hand account). Anyone who believes that yesterday's announcement from Tokyo is not part of a closely coordinated US-Japanese strategy needs a refresher course in hardball politics.
On the supposition that language will be crafted which will allow the Chinese and Indians to sign a treaty that obliges them from the get-go (but not too strenuously) and which will therefore allow the US Senate to ratify that treaty (but just barely), the Japanese initiative, plus some US specifics on binding-ness, technology transfers, and emissions trading, is probably just about the most that one can hope for realistically. We should not say so, of course.
TODAY ON THE SITE:
In addition to reading Bill McKibben, you'll want to give yourself a refresher course on the latest in climate science and climate politics from Leonie Haimson, the doyenne of the climate feature of our In The Trenches section.
Recent "Today" columns:
10/06: You Don't Need A Weatherman...
10/03: Cochise County, Arizona
10/02: The Copper Queen
10/01: Pesticides in California
9/30: Climate Policy: No Pain, No Gain
9/29: Climate Policy: No Pain, Much Gain
9/26: Darwin and Bug Spray
9/25: The Cooling of Los Angeles
9/24: The Boy Who Stalks California
9/23: Fire!
To access more "Today" columns, click "Archives" below.