Japan decision to abandon carbon target a ‘slap in the face’

Japan has made a snap announcement that it will be abandoning a target to reduce its carbon emissions by 2020.

The annoucement was made at a global climate change conference in Warsaw that’s supposed to be paving the way to a new agreement to reduce carbon emissions.

The decision has outraged environmental groups and dismayed delegates to the meeting who were pushing for more action.

“It is deeply disappointing that the Japanese government has taken this decision to significantly revise down its 2020 emissions target. This announcement runs counter to the broader political commitment to tackle climate change,” said Energy and Climate Secretary Ed Davey who is attending the summit next week.

Kelly Dent, from Oxfam, described the decision as “a slap in the face for poor countries who are right now struggling to cope with changes to their climate.” She added: “[Japan’s] actions may well further erode trust in current negotiations which must deliver a global climate deal in 2015.”

Japan’s previous emissions reduction target was to bring their emissions 25 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. It is now aiming to reduce emissions by just 3 per cent on 1990 levels.

The annoucement hasn’t just come at a bad time. Japan was also the nation that hosted the climate summit in 1997 that gave rise to the historic Kyoto protocol for reducing man’s greenhouse gas emissions. Since climate talks collapsed in Copenhagen in 2009, the future of the Kyoto protocol has been precarious. Now it has suffered a further blow.

But it will further stimulate debate about the role nuclear has to play in our low-carbon future. Carbon emissions in Japan have both risen sharply since they reigned-back nuclear power generation following the Fukushima nuclear accident. In Germany, despite record renewable energy generation, emissions have also gone up too as they reduce nuclear generation.

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