Japan’s carbon neutral pledge looks like a load of hot air

Japan’s new prime minister Yoshihide Suga is talking tough on climate change. Suga has promised that Japan will become carbon neutral by 2050, a step up from the previous commitment of an 80 per cent cut in emissions. But is this all a load of bluster?

While a certain opacity is expected in formal Japanese (a famous anecdote has a journalist having his copy returned with the instruction ‘Could you make it a little more vague?’) Suga was exceptionally unspecific in his so-called climate commitment. He made little reference to how the target would be achieved, or how progress would be monitored. Nor did he mention the Paris Climate Agreement, which mandates a 45 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030.

What he did say was that his government would undertake ‘the utmost efforts to create a green society’, which could mean just about anything. And given that Suga (71) and the rest of Japan’s reigning gerontocracy will probably be dead long before the apparent promise is due, the whole thing is being taken with a pinch of wasabi.