Man your damned posts, DPJ!

So the DPJ has already had a couple of days running the show. We were all pretty impressed here in the Climate Household when PM Hatoyama announced in September in New York that Japan would pledge to lop as much as 25% off its 1990 emissions level by 2020. That, as the good people at the World Resources Institute will inform you, is potentially the toughest target faced by any of the Annex I countries that carry weight in terms of emissions.

In a picture-book big-power rendering of the age-old "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" game, Japan's new target is conditional on the other Big Boys (read: US, PRC, India) committing to shouldering a comparable burden in mitigating anthropogenic climate change in their respective domestic policies, as well. But excitement and alacrity was not in short supply at the Hatoyamas', who set about promising all sorts of mandatory emissions trading schemes, green taxes and generalized feed-in tariffs for all forms of renewable energy.

The rumour mill would have it that the mechanism through which the DPJ acquired its green streak was through the shared sensitivity to climate matters of both current Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya and his State Secretary Fukuyama Tetsurō. Okada, while still Secretary General of the DPJ in August, famously told the Keidanren to go and take a hike, as "We must make cuts based on scientific knowledge at any cost, instead of just doing what we can" (credit for this quote goes to Point Carbon's Hisane Masaki). Meanwhile, the current Minister of Environment, Ozawa Sakihito (no relation of party kingpin Ozawa Ichirō), is said to be a newcomer to the topic of climate change. (Such is fate: Okada is a real DPJ heavy weight and was duly granted MOFA, whereas Environment is an orphan ministry that has to scrape by with the crumbs the more senior ministries will let it have.)

So, after more than three months in power, what does the DPJ have to show in terms of climate policy? The government's task force entrusted with climate policy has been feverishly at work, but Japan's éminences grises, some of which are said to be still faithful to the ancien régime, cannot seem to agree on much. Already in the autumn Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Naoshima Masayuki tempered Ozawa's enthusiasm saying the ETS plans would have to wait for 2011. And that is no surprise when the Party movers-and-shakers are busy touring China with their private flying circus, apologizing to the neighbours for ruining their lawn during the last party, dreaming up some ganj-fueled ideas about how to run the country, or talking darkly in shadowy gatherings about how the Party's mojo is going down the drain.

Not to worry, Japan has never been a place famed for party discipline. But in the meanwhile there are still some darn big fish to fry in terms of policy, and that goes well beyond climate. As better informed people than me will tell you, the DPJ's lofty electoral manifesto has met the real world and one by one hallowed electoral promises are being revised: gasoline surtaxes, child allowances, highway tolls, elimination of wasteful spending are all on the chopping block.

Last year's Copenhagen climate conference was DOA. Twitching all nervously and blurting out on public means of transportation at helpless fellow passengers about the need to figure out what to do about the damned weather changing is something that only obsessive-compulsive climate people like me are liable to do. I also do feel that it is a bit passé to remind others that "the time is running out", but i can't shake the feeling that it is. Take-home message: Them folk in the DPJ had better start worrying about living up to at least a couple of electoral pledges. On climate specifically they risk looking mighty stupid come November in Mexico, if they showed up with neither concrete policy packages (forgivable in Copenhagen given how recently they had been elected) nor concrete ideas about how to engage the US and the BASIC countries who managed to abduct COP-15 two months ago (forgivable perhaps as well due to too much waiting for the US Senate to put on its make-up).

But, seriously, guys? Get cracking! If you don't get your act together and act, others will, and then you, and i, and the entire world can kiss the pretty mochi-flavoured -25% good-bye faster than you can say "Kangaete mimasen ka?".