Japan’s business circles are united in standing against the effort to stop global warming on the grounds that “the public will be forced to pay the cost” without mentioning the merit of the effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
On March 17, the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) and 57 other business organizations ran an ad in national newspapers to draw public attention to their estimate that a 3-percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions from the 1990 levels will cost 52 trillion yen, or 1.05 million yen per household.
Emphasizing that “Japan is a top runner in becoming a low-carbon society,” the ad says that “unsubstantiated excessive cuts in CO2 emissions will force the public to pay the enormous cost.
It also asserts that it will be useless for Japan to make efforts to seek to conclude an emissions cut treaty unless the major gas emitters, the United States and China, participate in it.
However, the International Energy Agency (IEA) data in 2006 show that the amount of CO2 emissions was 9.49 tons per capita in Japan while 8.07 tons in 27 European Union nations, 8.86 tons in Britain, and 5.97 tons in France.
Japan’s business circles’ assertion, which is to shift the cost onto the public, is unreasonable. They are totally ignoring the advantages, including energy-saving effects, from measures to prevent global warming.
