Bishop Hill Lurch
Nov 15, 2013 Energy: grid Foreign 
Underlining the UK's growing isolation on the carbon reduction front, Japan has announced a dramatic slashing of its carbon reduction target.
Japan has warned that it will fall short of an ambitious greenhouse-gas reduction target it set for itself four years ago, saying that under the most extreme scenario – involving an immediate and permanent shutdown of its nuclear industry – emissions would rise slightly rather than fall by 25 per cent as promised.
Yoshihide Suga, the chief cabinet secretary, said on Friday that the government had committed to a new target of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 3.8 per cent over the 15 years ending in 2020. That would represent a rise of 3 per cent over the longer span covered by its previous commitment, which used 1990 as its base year.
Everywhere you look, the involvement of politicians in the energy market bring nothing but wild policy lurches from one extreme to another. This lurch is in the right direction, but who knows what the next one will bring. Politics is the problem, not the solution.
Reader Comments (14)
Japanese allowed to build reactors inside the EU.
Japanes have to compete with the Germans and the French to build reactors in China and India.
Germans and the Japanese not allowed to build reactors in their own countries so they build them in
Someone elses country.
Stumped because they didntt build a sea wall high enough.
LNG Heading East
"This is an energy story about an earthquake, tsunami, nuclear disaster, escalating gas prices, global LNG heading East and the inability of Europe to address the problem of its energy security draining away. While the USA is drilling, Europe is contemplating it's futile stand against global CO2 emissions and deploying wind turbines and solar panels."
Andrew, coincidentally today I have a post on Japan that will give your readers some insight as to why events in the Far East are pushing up energy prices in Europe.
My initials are the same as Enropic Man and I think some of your commenters were getting us confused so decided to change my name.
Euan
The targets never were achievable, it's just a question as to how this gets presented.
Maybe it's a good sign that the Japanese government feels able to be so forthright, but it would be better to not make foolish, politically-driven commitments in the first place. Especially so with something as important as energy policy. But perhaps it is inevitable that the most important subjects will always attract the most wacko ideas and political interventions. I dunno.
Im currently watching the repeat of Question Time with Ed Davey and Nigel Lawson from Portmouth
Question was the Phillips Hurricane due to ClImate Change.
The panel are all banging on
Good way to reduce Carbon Emissions get rid of Heavy industry sack 2 thousand Portsmouth Dock Yard Workers instead of Scottish .
Why cant British Ship building compete with Korea because of high gas and electricity can thank Ed Davy and his Green Levy.
I don't believe any figures out of Asia any way.
- Western cultures have a strong culture of telling the truth, but Asian cultures have different priorities so traditionally tell people what they want to hear. So when a Chinese minister asks if the production targets have been made there is only one answer. So even if Japan had stuck to the old targets and then said they had exceeded them by 5% I still wouldn't believe them.
- And I wouldn't quick to believe any Climate Change figures out of China ..whether it be CO2 output or anything to do with renewables.
I don't believe any figures coming out of Western nations in any way. Westerners are dominated by greenthink, and have grown fat and lazy. That is why so much manufacturing industry has moved from the west to the east. In Asia, stuff gets done. In the west its all too much trouble.
When a western politician asks if doubling the cost of energy will have any negative effect on society, they get the smoothtalk. No, the models predict that everyone will replace their whitegoods and the extra efficiency will compensate for the extra expense.
Thats why I don't trust any figures coming out of the west. Westerners are all bullshitters.
Energy policy and pricing, onerous employment legislation and regulation, the gradual erosion and disappearance of the work ethic - all have contributed to the decline of the WEST, true - we got fat and lazy and we kidded ourselves that our hegemony would long continue.
But the decline was, if not carefully orchestrated, it was 'helped along' by some very bad decisions and some very baleful people and organizations, countries - who hated and still hate the Occidental way's - mores and culture.
"Westerners are all bullshitters."
??
Hmm,
All of us?
Just a goddamned casuist nit picking minute there Hector :-)
...................."The West" - it ain't that simple, although for many on the left - green provided a whole new doctrine for the left leaning humanist pedagoguery of Marxist dogmatists and their rapacious monster of political environmentalism was spawned. Academia, saw green as the new red - it needed a nudge but not much and hey presto it's CAGW! Truly - it was the perfect vehicle for the concrete and glass campus lefties to peddle their collectivist - 'redistribution' OWG propagandization. Now its tentacles reach everywhere, in business, in the schools, in the political sphere - those students educated in the late Sixties, early to mid Seventies became the movers and the shakers of today - in Germany, Britain and in the USofA.
"Westerners are all bullshitters", some ............we know that the vast majority [97%?] of western politicians are all bullshitters, indeed, as are most of the giant conglomerate companies who specialize in bullshitting along with tax off-shoring. Then, all of the western world's investment bankers, hedgers are the most accomplished bullshitters - it goes with the territory.
Most, though not all of the above moved into the carriages of the green agenda gravy train in from the late 1980' and early 90's.
That Western culture is collapsing, is true but it is a victim and this is due to many factors - we lost our way.
If we had the will - it is still not too late to reverse most of the damage, one of the most vital reforms we could make to restore the sick man of the West - and a simple one.
Bin the green agenda - now.
Not all of us in the West, believed the green mantras, I never did, and I never will.
Your Grace - you totally encapsulated the problem in your last sentence...
Hectors right there are plenty of liars outside of Asia, even though it's a much greater sin in British culture some here people are have been pretty blatant in misleading about climate matters.
- Sorry for being over-direct which can lead to misinterpretation. I'm not into the false dichotomy that one place is great and another terrible, the world is a complex place and there are good and bad in every place ..in geography and any place in time. ( I have worked on organic farms and green festivals etc. in Japan & Korea and Malaysia .. it should go without saying I indebted to the kindness of many people)
athelstan.
If you read the post above mine you will find stewgreen's statement of fact:
Stewgreen implies that all Asians are liars and cannot be trusted. You find no exception to his generalisation that all Asians are untrustworthy liars, but you dislike my response that all westerners are bullshitters. My my, double standard? Irony bypass?
Jeez I was just saying "be careful with figures out of Japan" Do I really need to explain that I was not making a racist statement. Stewgreen made no general statements about ALL Asians at all.
- People can think what they like however It annoys me when people take 2+2 and extrapolate it to make 5
OK I did say "I don't believe any figures out of Asia any way." It is not the same as saying "Asians are all bullshitters" so is not equivalent to "Westerners are all bullshitters."
- "I don't believe any figures out of Asia any way" I should have added without corroboration. There are plenty of stats out UK I not believe, but experience teaches me to be especially careful about stats out of Japan etc. and that it the topic of this thread not boring old me.
:-)
I did it................................ with a smile.
Cripes.
Heh, 'Lurch' is one of our nicknames for John Kerry.
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Unfortunately the Japanese volte-face is the triumph of one irrational idea -- nuclear is dangerous -- over another -- fossil fuels are dangerous. That is, the replacement of one paranoia by a larger one. Small comfort for the forces of reason.