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.