Environment & Energy

hatrack

(59,587 posts) Wed Nov 20, 2013, 10:25 AM Nov 2013

Multinational Climate Negligence In One Handy, Colorful, USA Today-Worthy Graphic!

When Japan dramatically slashed its plans last week for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, from 25 percent to just 3.8 percent compared to 2005 figures, the international reaction was swift and damning.

Britain called it “deeply disappointing.” China’s climate negotiator, Su Wei, said, “I have no way of describing my dismay.” The Alliance of Small Island Nations, which represents islands most at risk of sea level rise, branded the move “a huge step backwards.”

The decision was based on the fact that Japan’s 50 nuclear reactors—which had provided about 30 percent of the country’s electricity—are currently shuttered for safety checks after the Fukushima disaster in March 2011, despite the government trying to bring some of them back online. That nuclear energy is largely being replaced by fossil fuels.

Japan’s announcement has cast a shadow on this week’s climate negotiations in Warsaw. Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics and a former lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, described the mood as “a downward spiral of ambition” which is “undermining confidence in the process and the ability to move forward.” Elliot Diringer, the Executive Vice President of the DC-based think tank Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, says NGOs and policymakers are feeling frustrated: “There was a great deal of sympathy for Japan in the aftermath of Fukushima,” he says. “And that’s now converted to disappointment.”

EDIT

http://climatedesk.org/2013/11/4267/