The proposal that nobody liked

So, there you have it: months of Cabinet deliberations behind closed doors have produced a draft Basic Law on Global Warming. Even though the atmosphere, no pun intended, of the discussion must have been way more conducive to the creation of an ambitious law on climate change, the contents of the discussion were by no means a foregone conclusion.

Where to even begin?! Naoshima Masayuki, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, pushed his Ministry's view (Japanese) that putting an absolute cap on emissions would hurt industries exposed to international competition. Green groups, predictably enough, popped a vein over this (Japanese), since there is not much point in having such a cap-and-trade scheme under which you are rewarded for improving your energy efficiency while your actual emissions go up as a result of increased production levels.

Meanwhile Fukushima Mizuho, president of the Social Democratic Party of Japan, a coallition partner in the DPJ-led government, and Minister of State for Consumer Affairs and Food Safety, Social Affairs, and Gender Equality, voiced her opposition (Japanese) to the expantion of Japan's nuclear industry. This, for those not really following the discussion, is absolutely bonkers, since, while Japan is planning to open 14 new reactors by 2030, it needs (Point Carbon - subscription required) 20 new ones to replace the capacity of aged reactors. Japan's nuclear reactors are famously operating under capacity (buy the book if you don't believe me) and they are the only thing that prevent Japan from becoming a smoke-belching coal monster (expect a post on this in the future).

This is not even mentioning the strong pushes from the Keidanren and the Japanese Iron and Steel Federation (both Japanese) for more discussion and deliberation that would be needed in order to make sure that the Japanese people really, really got what kind of terrible costs being ambitious on climate would actually entail.

Well, the draft has been submitted to the Diet. We at the Climate Household will not say anything too bad about the draft, mainly because (a) we've been waiting for something like this since the dawn of time and (b) we have not read through the entire thing yet - only an outline. But, yes, intensity-based emissions trading for some industries is in it (BOO!), nuclear power is in it, too (YAY!), feed-in tariffs for renewables are to be expanded (*standing ovation*), and cutting emissions by 25% from their 1990 levels by 2020 is reafirmed - conditional on other big international actors playing ball and without specifying what percentage of those cuts will be achieved domestically (...yay?).

All in all, there is something to love and something to hate in this draft for everybody. Unless you are the Keindanren and their ilk, who are going hatehateHATE it. Sankei, a newspaper that loves to hate the current administration, minced no words (Japanese) about the doom, death and destruction that would befall the nation if it were adopted: this law "will force a great burden on the people's lives and enterprises of this nation". It goes on to quote Keidanren chairman Fujio Mitarai's somewhat stylistically incongruent hiss: "I wish for them to show adequately the effects and contents of this law and the influence it will have on employment and people's lifestyles a bit more [sic], and pursue the dialogue with all strata of society". It then goes on rattling off some numbers about the extraordinary costs of such a policy, which, for the uninitiated (Japanese - page 11 if you can't be bothered to read through the entire thing), are based on numbers that assume that the Japanese economy will go on an average of basically 2% a year until 2020 and then 1.2% until 2030. (In case you were on Mars for more than a decade: since 1992 Japan has had 5 years in which it managed to eek out year-on-year growth in excess of 2%, as opposed to 4 where it was negative. 2009: -5.3%. Ask these guys if you do not believe me.) Anyway, what the Sankei Shinbun says is all terrible and too bad and shikata ga nai.

Overall, the draft law is not ideal, but politics never is, so we will not lambast it too much. However, intensity-based targets for some industries, no doubt the most energy-intensive and therefore most carbon-polluting ones, are a big disappointment. Actually one wonders whether Mr Mitarai is not secretely having a field day over this. There is a Voluntary Action Plan on Climate Change for the Keidanren out there, aiming for reduce its emissions by 7% below 1990 by 2012, and, even without the horrible financial crisis at the moment, industrial bodies seem to be in compliance. It remains to be seen what kind of intensity target the Keidanren will manage to negotiate for itself. Time for the DPJ to get their heads out of their asses and realize that they are having the wool pulled over their eyes. How you can pledge -25% and then eliminate the need for the greatest emitters to cut their emissions escapes our comprehension. (*tongue-in-cheek* Maybe they are willing to go for some voluntary production restraints?!)

You can expect some friendly fire from the SDP. But the SDP is irrelevant to passing the law in the Lower House and holds only 5 seats out 242 in the Upper House, versus the DPJ's own 109. Unless the DPJ bungles something and sees its popularity plummet severely before this summer's Upper House elections, it should be able to afford to steamroll this past Ms Fukushima. Anyway, such a scenario is inconceivable. Totally.

Some tugging at it will no doubt happen from the lately completely spastic LDP, who will no doubt choose this moment to stand up for the common man. Interestingly, the LDP's sidekicks for the past couple of electoral cycles, the New Kōmeitō, intend to put forth a position that is much more ambitious on climate: none of this intesity bull for them, and auctioning of allowances starting 2020. If anything the Kōmeitō might succeed on dragging the bill into more ambitious territory than the current draft would let one believe.

Anyway. Grab some popcorn. This is going to be fun to watch.