New PM vows tough gas cuts
2009-09-07 18:09
Tokyo - Japan's next prime minister on Monday vowed tough greenhouse gas cuts for the world's number two economy as he prepared to name key cabinet posts before his government takes power next week.
Yukio Hatoyama - whose centre-left Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) defeated a conservative government in a landslide election eight days earlier - said his government would take an aggressive global stance on climate change.
Japan would seek to cut its emissions by 25% by 2020 from 1990 levels - a cut far deeper than the 8% reduction pledged by the outgoing business-friendly government of Prime Minister Taro Aso.
"Our nation will strongly call on major countries around the world to set aggressive goals," said Hatoyama, 62, who last week suggested that Japan would seek a greater voice in international diplomacy.
The premier-in-waiting, who is due to take office on September 16, is planning to detail his plan, which he dubbed the 'Hatoyama Initiative', at a UN meeting on climate change in New York later this month.
'Kyoto expires 1012'
Japan will officially present its target at international talks in Copenhagen in December aimed at agreeing a follow-up treaty to the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012.
Yvo de Boer, the chief of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which preceded the Kyoto protocol, called the DPJ's new target "laudable".
He said "it is commensurate with what science says is needed and will catalyse real change in the Japanese economy".
"With such a target Japan will take on the leadership role that industrialised countries have agreed to take on climate change abatement," de Boer told the Asahi World Environment Forum conference in Tokyo.
Japan is the fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases which are blamed for raising global temperatures, melting the earth's ice caps and glaciers, and changing weather patterns.
Environmental groups hailed the DPJ pledge, but the outgoing deputy minister for the economy, trade and industry, Harufumi Mochizuki, charged that Hatoyama "is choosing a very tough road ahead for the Japanese people and economy".