Japan unveiled a new target on Wednesday for reducing greenhouse gas emissions 15 percent by 2020, but the plan was slammed by environmentalists and the UN climate chief as leaving the industrial world dangerously short of its pollution goals.
Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso said in Tokyo the plan was ambitious and in line with efforts by the US and Europe to trim carbon emissions over the next decade. He said Japan calculated its target on a 2005 base year — but environmentalists said that move was designed to deliberately mask the real effect of the Japanese cut.
Environmentalists attending UN climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany, said the reduction amounted only to an 8 percent or 9 percent cut compared with the more widely accepted base line of 1990.
Japan already has committed to reduce its emissions by 6 percent by 2012 under the 12-year-old Kyoto Protocol. Activists said the pledge to cut emissions a further 2 percent over the next eight years “lacked ambition” and could lead to a retreat by other countries.
Yvo de Boer, general secretary of the UN Convention on Climate Change, said emission reduction plans submitted so far leave industrial countries “a long long way from the ambitious reduction scenarios” that scientists say are needed.
He appeared taken aback by the limited scope of the Japanese announcement.
“For the first time in two-and-a-half years in this job, I don’t know what to say,” he said.
When pressed, De Boer said pledges by industrial countries fell far short of the 25 percent to 40 percent reductions in emissions by 2020 that UN scientists say is required to prevent potentially disastrous effects of climate change. Those effects could include a rise in sea levels that will threaten coastal areas, more extreme weather, the extinction of many plant and animal species and the spread of human diseases.
He said Japan’s targets referred only to domestic actions, and he hoped Tokyo will factor in more measures later to further reduce its carbon footprint. Those could include better farming and forestry practices to absorb carbon from the air and buying credits by helping poor countries reduce emissions and deforestation.
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
‘VERY DIRE’: This year’s drought, exacerbated by El Nino, is affecting 44 percent of Malawi’s crop area and up to 40 percent of its population of 20.4 million In the worst drought in southern Africa in a century, villagers in Malawi are digging for potentially poisonous wild yams to eat as their crops lie scorched in the fields. “Our situation is very dire, we are starving,” 76-year-old grandmother Manesi Levison said as she watched over a pot of bitter, orange wild yams that she says must cook for eight hours to remove the toxins. “Sometimes the kids go for two days without any food,” she said. Levison has 30 grandchildren under her care. Ten are huddled under the thatched roof of her home at Salima, near Lake Malawi, while she boils