By Stephen Leahy
WARSAW, Nov 15 2013 (IPS) Japan announced Friday that it will renege on its carbon emissions pledge, likely ending any hope global warming can be kept to 2.0 degrees C.
The shocking announcement comes on the fifth day of the U.N. climate talks in Warsaw known as COP19, where more than 190 nations have agreed to a 2.0 C target and are trying to close the carbon emission gap to get there.
“It’s like a slap in the face of those suffering from the impacts of climate change such as the Philippines.” — Wael Hmaidan
Japan will increase that gap three to four percent with its new 2020 reduction target, according to the Climate Action Tracker (CAT). It amounts to a three-percent increase compared to a 1990 baseline. Japan’s 2009 Copenhagen Accord pledge was a 25 percent reduction by 2020.
“Japan is taking us in the opposite direction,” Marion Vieweg of Climate Analytics, a German climate research organisation, told IPS here in Warsaw.
“Their revision shows the bottom up approach is not working if countries can simply drop their pledges at any time,” Vieweg said.
Climate scientists have long maintained that the 2020 target for industrialised countries should be to reduce emissions 25-40 percent compared to a 1990 baseline. However, even if nations meet their current climate pledges under the Copenhagen Accord, CO2 emissions in 2020 are likely to be eight to 12 billion tonnes higher than what’s needed, according to the U.N. Environment Programme’sEmissions Gap Report 2013.
Japan, the fifth largest emitter of CO2, is just the latest to abandon its international commitments.
Stephen Leahy, International Environmental Journalist 