Tokyo irked by US stance on Kyoto

 



  TOKYO - Coral reefs will die from water that's too hot. Polar 
bears will have less room to roam, crowding some of them out of 
existence. Birds will start flying an extra mile north each 
year, and may starve when they get there.

  These are among the dire possible consequences of global 
warming, say climate-change experts. At no time was it clearer 
that countries should take steps to slow this process than when 
150 countries signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.

  But now, with President George Bush saying the US will not 
ratify the protocol - which was shaped in part to fit 
Washington's concerns five years ago - the accord's ultimate 
effectiveness is in doubt, and many US allies are irritated.

  For Japan, a nation of nature-lovers, the shaping of the accord 
on their soil was a source of pride - and proof that they were 
still relevant players on the world stage.

  "It is absolutely inadmissible for the US, which is the greatest 
gas-emitting country, to once again turn its back and present 
something that is against Kyoto Protocol and the framework 
convention on climate change," says Mie Asaoka, president of the 
Kiko Network, a Tokyo environmental-umbrella organization 
representing about 150 Japanese groups.

  The clash over how to stop global warming while allowing 
sluggish economies to prosper occurs at an awkward point in 
US-Japanese relations. US analysts looking east say that as 
Japan's economic dominance in Asia diminishes, so will the 
importance of the US-Japan relationship as a whole.

  The US Department of Defense recently left Japan off its list of 
nations contributing to the post-Sept. 11 war on terror. 
Realizing the accidental slight, the US later apologized for 
overlooking Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's efforts - 
considered tremendously ambitious here - to alter the 
interpretation of Japan's post-World War II pacifist 
constitution in order to dispatch warships for noncombat 
support.

  During Mr. Bush's visit here last month, Mr. Koizumi gently 
balked at the president's proposed alternative to the Kyoto 
agreement, saying that Japan would "like to see further efforts" 
on the part of the US.

  While there are no protesters in the streets, there is an air of 
indignation here over Washington's "do-it-our-way" decision on 
something that effects the whole globe.

  Among the Kiko Network's handouts is a pamphlet with a cartoon 
of the world. On one end, Koizumi defensively holds up the Kyoto 
Protocol. On the other, a fiendish-looking Bush seizes a weeping 
globe in his monster-size hands.

  In the eyes of Japan and many US allies, the Bush 
administration's decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol is 
one of many signals that Washington is growing increasingly 
unilateralist in the six months since the Sept. 11 attacks on 
America. From pulling out of Kyoto - which is in the process of 
being ratified by the European Union - to labeling Iran, Iraq, 
and North Korea an "axis of evil" and prime targets in the next 
phase of the war, America's allies are seeing in the US a 
growing tendency to act first and consult later.

  The Bush administration is offering its own alternative plan, 
the Clear Skies and Global Climate Change Initiatives, which 
aides say are more market-sensitive and will reduce the worst 
air pollutants by 70 percent while finding a strategy to cut 
greenhouse gas intensity by 18 percent over the next 10 years.

  But environmental advocates say Bush's alternative will allow 
the US to continue to increase the amount of gas it emits. They 
fear that, because the US is forging its own way, smaller 
nations that are expected to ratify the Kyoto Protocol could 
start backing out. This could lead to a two-tier system in which 
the US and a few others - Australia and Canada may follow suit - 
will choose their own targets, while the rest of the world will 
be limited to the stricter Kyoto limits.

  
Not everyone in Japan is upset with Bush's alternative.

  Japanese industry has already gone through vigorous 
energy-saving - and thus environmentally friendly - drives after 
the two energy crises of the 1970s and 1980s, says Mitsuru 
Shinozaki, a spokesman for Keidanren, the country's most 
influential business lobby. After the Earth Summit of 10 years 
ago, he says, Japan discussed and implemented a self-action plan 
to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. "Any further policy to 
reduce emissions," he says "will hurt Japanese industrial 
competitiveness."

  
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