On this day June 3, 2002
Japan ratifies Kyoto – followed in 2013 by a slashing of ambition.
http://treealerts.org/type/alerts/2013/11/international-frustration-as-japanese-slash-climate-ambition/
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 373ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context for this was that Japan had suggested something called “pledge and review” in mid-1991 as a way of breaking the logjam around American intransigence on a climate treaty, and then Japan must have stuck its hand up at some point in 95 to say, “hey, we will host the third COP,” knowing that the third COP would be the consequential one where the Berlin mandate was supposed to reach its apotheosis. So the Japanese had been heavily involved, as you’d expect a middle power to be. I don’t know why it took the Japanese Diet five years from the end or four and a half years from the end of December 97 through to June of 2002 to ratify. So I will look that up. It’s a little bit interesting, because you’d assume they’d want to force the pace, but there will have been, of course, fierce fights within the Japanese government, within Japanese elites over the costs of doing this.
Remember, the Japanese economy was already quite energy efficient thanks to the aftermath of the first Oil Shock,, and therefore there wasn’t lots of “low hanging fruit” and therefore actual emission reductions were going to be perhaps a bit more expensive. There was also the question of, did you try and do more nuclear? Was there much scope for renewables, etc, etc.
The specific context was that by this point, the Americans under Dick Cheney and his mascot, George W Bush, had very publicly pulled out of Kyoto. They had done that in March of 2001, and the Japanese must have known that Australia was not going to ratify. So maybe they held off in order to try and re inject some momentum. I don’t know that is speculation…
What I think we can learn is this: Your ignorance is the volume of a sphere, your knowledge the surface area.
What happened next: The Kyoto Protocol languished for a couple of years, but then, because the Russians wanted membership of the World Trade Organisation, the Europeans were able to persuade them to ratify Kyoto, which had no real costs for Russia. And so in early 2005 the Kyoto Protocol became international law, which meant that there would be a negotiation process for a sequel to Kyoto, which meant the Americans and the Australians especially had a problem.
Climate Policy
Volume 1, Issue 3, September 2001, Pages 343-362
Japanese ratification of the Kyoto Protocol
Hiroshi Matsumura
https://doi.org/10.1016/S1469-3062(01)00023-7Get rights and content
Abstract
This paper discusses Japan’s quantitative Kyoto target in the context of the country’s socio-economic and political background and its desire to express international leadership. Japan’s initial negotiating target was developed as a compromise between domestic industrial considerations and its international ambitions, and was strengthened further under the pressures to achieve success at Kyoto.
The original projections relied heavily upon nuclear expansion that will not be realized. Though economic stagnation has helped emissions to decline from their mid-1990s peak, it has also reduced the attention devoted to climate change and the willingness to bear costs, and Japan’s commitment remains daunting. Japanese bureaucrats and diplomats are called to work closer together and in an integrated manner in order to develop a new, more realistic policy package for achieving their target. This report analyses various scenarios for additional policies for Japan, including fuel switching, carbon taxation and emissions trading, and concludes that the introduction of gas in the context of energy market liberalization is a key possibility. It also considers the sink and the nuclear energy issues both of high importance for the country.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
June 1, 2011 – Japanese office workers into short sleeves to save the planet
References
You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
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Also on this day:
June 3, 1970 – US Senator suggests World Ecology Unit – All Our Yesterdays
June 3, 1989 – Liberal Party to outflank Labor on #climate?!