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Hatoyama pledges on world stage 25% emissions cut by 2020

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I think energy market also needs competition between sustainable and conventional one to bend the cost curve, otherwise, the global economy stays flat for some time and is plummeting into another great depression as the international stimulus package can't last long.

In this economy, fuel price is hovering around $65 to $75 a barrel, which underscores the actual value might be much the same as $145 per barrel of the peak price. Last year, the petrol price jumped from about $60 to $145 per barrel in quite a short period.

My sense is that this great recession is ascribed to excessively higher price of petrol in recent years. This price spelled about high consumer prices and mortgage rates as a way to slow inflation, which wound up with crash in financial and construction markets. In an attempt to circumvent the censure of two petrol wars, the mainstream economists put focus on the both markets, and it delayed the urgent action on the long and long overdue contemporary energy needs.

As the deposit of fossil fuels has been depleting more than expected, and the population world-wide growing consistently, India and China have chased the costs of cheap labor, the U.S. has trailed the occupation, citing war on terror. Today, global economy seems to be driving along the fence of stimulus package near cliff, and EU is turning around decisively.

As a major driver, IT industry stalled and stranded in a game industry for the lack of 21st energy policy over the stretch of two wars needs to expand into the all but infinite energy, medical, and academic industry where the investors are eagerly waiting for policy-makers to act now, which I guess is why the far-reaching and long overdue health care and 21st energy bill have come into focus.

In brief, only technology and innovation can meet the challenge, and the world of science has potential enough to get past this turbulence and for all over the globe to go along in harmony. Recently, GM and Reva that achieved a fantastic innovation of "wireless electricity"/ "instant remote recharge" have joined hands to develop Electric Vehicles.

Thank You !!

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In the future CO2 of the US and China will doom all people and animals if they don't reduce CO2 as much as possible from today as long as there are not targets of emission cut of CO2.

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As long as it doesn't mean any more of this ridiculous, productivity-sapping, sweat-inducing, laundry-increasing, wrongheaded Cool Biz, I'm in favor.

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"Yeah? Then how come last winter was even colder than the winter before?"

If you think that this is evidence against global warming, then you don't understand it at all. It's about average global temperatures rising over time. You're not necessarily going to personally experience a noticeable rise in temperatures from year to year.

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Actually, societymike, shipping is a ridiculously efficient mode delivering goods. Shipping does account for 4% of world CO2 emissions, which is twice that of aviation (2%). But shipping also accounts for much more volume. Air cargo costs about 1.8 lbs of CO2 per ton per mile. Shipping costs less than 0.01 lbs of CO2 per ton per mile (about 200 times less than air freight). Shipping a bottle of beer from half way around the world will use less CO2 than it will cost to make a special trip to the store in your car.

No, if you compare shipping to manufacturing (steel and concrete especially), you will find that manufacturing weighs in at 36% of world CO2 emissions. If you wish to make a large dent in CO2 emissions, one of the best ways is to not own a car. This reduces the demand for steel, and also reduces the need to resurface roads.

I haven't included links to references since I don't want to make this message too long, but everything I've listed is easy to find using your favorite search engine. I heartily recommend that people look up these kinds of facts so they can find ways to help.

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As always the "skeptics" are really just showing they don't understand the question. Yeah, yeah, yeah, climate change has happened throughout the earth's history and is caused by cycles in solar activity. Brilliant work Sherlock for figuring that out. The question is whether human activity has caused additional changes in climate that magnify or deviate from the natural cycle. And seeing as none of the skeptics has a clue what the actual natural cycle is, that makes their skepticism pretty much useless.

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"hello nuclear power"

Is this the nuclear power that produces extremely toxic by-products that will stay extremely toxic way beyond my lifetime or your lifetime?

"Global warming and climate change are facts"

Yeah? Then how come last winter was even colder than the winter before?

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MrUSA: There's a documentary called 'The Great Global Warming Swindle'. Sounds like it's worth a watch!

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The commitment of Hatoyama administration seems to make a meaningful contribution to the policy direction of India & China. Earlier on, Japan as well as EU led on the bold deployment of global stimulus package that has lifted the world economy out of brink, today, both are steering the global economy in the right direction.

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Global warming and climate change are facts. What is being diputed is the CAUSE of climate change. One theory is that it is due to man-made CO2 emissions. Another theory says that it's a natural phenomenon related to changes in the sun's heat.

Cutting emissions and reducing air pollution is certainly a good thing but will this really create any significant global 'cooling'...well, we'd like to think that we have control over our environment but maybe we are only fooling ourselves. Only time will tell...

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"All I need is the air that I breath..........."

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sorry, final comment: the link is on energy not climate change, but the same thinking is needed so that you don't get played again

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read it again guys... "to cut emissions by 25% by 2020 from 1990 levels.."

once again... 1990 levels. That's a 20yr window and since MOST of the modern technology since the mid-late 90's have already cut emissions from 1990 levels, so with that, most of that 25% is already done, now for the remainder to be trimmed in the next 10yrs, not that hard really.

Also, someone mentioned "cars idling, left running, etc". In fact, modern cars today are not the majority of the emissions producers. Especially in Japan where the larghe majority of all autos are very clean leaving very little emissions in their wake. The most negative emissions outputs as far as vehicles go, comes from #1 being Ocean going vessles, ships, Ferries, etc. Then would be diesle trains, then large trucks in the trucking industry. They are always overlooked because they are the silent factor that don't "affect" the average Joe. While ignorant politicians like to make a name by making passenger car emissions more strict, the REAL polluters are in the shipping industry where there are almost NO regulations on emissions and therefore they still continue to pollute in gross amounts.

Why? Well, what would a politician benefit by making large corporate shipping industries suffer by making stricter regulations on their primary modes of transport? So, they get to look "cool" in the eyes of the voters by making normal transportation stricter when it's not really them being the big polluters in the first place since the Auto industry already has incentives to make cleaner vehicles from the get go.

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I'm sure there have to be a few to refute it, but if you have a few on one side and thousands on the other, it boggles the mind to discount the science. Gore had 928 to 0 in his movie. 928. How many studies do you have? Any? Note: Peer reviewed.

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I see, so those silly scientists spending oodles doing thousands of studies for decades, core samples, and satellite topography not one refuting global warming versus some non-peer reviewed spew you found online...and you chose the spew? Nice one...

the partial pressure of air is affecting plant growth, since weeds like CO2 they are growing larger and that trend is expected to continue. Hope you're not a hay fever sufferer. Also photosynthesis capacity decreases with rising temperature and thus the germination of wheat is drastically affected. But hey, those are peer reviewed articles.

The sad part is that there are more of these idiots, than people who actually passed high school chemistry and we're all going to suffer because of them. Argh

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Hey, how about everyone cut CO2 by not dispensing and opening up any more soft drinks.

Yeah and leave all the refrigerator doors open to cool down the earth. I hope that was a joke about the soft drink. Cutting emissions has a drastic effect on US economy. Us economy relys on the purchase of oil (all oil is bought and sold in USD) to keep it going so they can continue to print money with no asset backing. I would be surprised if the US would fall in line with the idea of cutting emissions and thus possibly de-functing Japans initiative. Of course there is nothing to stop Japan from leading the way and showing that cutting emissions is also a financial benefit to economy stimulus.

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Despite how big your egos' are, mankind cannot warm the planet even if he tried.

and your evidence of that would be???

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"Global warming is not caused by CO2 emissions. It is caused by natural cycles of solar radiation."

bamboohat, what's your source for this information? I'd like to learn more about this.

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Glad to see Japan taking a lead, his English is pretty good..no more embarrassement for Japan. And his wife was doing a great job too singing with the kids.

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Global warming is not caused by CO2 emissions. It is caused by natural cycles of solar radiation. Despite how big your egos' are, mankind cannot warm the planet even if he tried. We are no match for the large forces of mother natural (sun, earth, etc) that don't care one iota about puny humans running around pretending they can change the earth's climate.

The truth of the matter is that first world countries are promoting this "man made global warming myth" in order to keep their first world status. There is no way third world countries can become developed if they don't employ carbon emitting factories and technology. This is simply a way to keep power among those that already have it.

That and Hatoyama is trying to deflect international attention from that whole dolphin killing fiasco, and trying to bring the Olympics to Tokyo. Otherwise, he will just be another fool in a long line of Japanese politicians who haven't done squat for this country.

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...unless all major emitters agree on an ambitious target as well...

Thats sound to me like that Hatoyama dont have any real intention of do it. If we are going to do it lets do it, there is no point on hope that others follow us, the group mentality dont work well outside J and westerners with the USA at the head have a rater strong individualistic culture. Just show some balls for a change in place of be affraid of criticism.

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Hey, how about everyone cut CO2 by not dispensing and opening up any more soft drinks. But they should keep bottling the products to use up existing CO2. Oh, and stop beer production -- awful amount of CO2 produced, over 10 million metric tons per year.

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Sarge I agree, Global warming is a myth and we are suckers...err well you guys are suckers. However if a byproduct of this myth is cleaner air and less pollution then I'm all for it!

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It is very easy to say that Hatoyama could not make it to reduce 25 percent by 2020. But we must do it from now, otherwise we will be surely ended much shorter than dinosaurs age. Are we humans smarter?

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Well lets start with all the people who idle their cars while parked, sleeping, eating lunch, Shopping with the car idling with no one inside, or with a child alone inside, all with the ac on, why? cos its hot outside, go inside the store or somewhere they have ac on....Its not good for our enviroment, its not good for people with asthma, and for those selfish people who dont care about others it saves so much fuel ans money...

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we expect good job from his new gorvment.and a new change

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How come Hatoyama's pledge did not make the global headlines?

I only found his pledge within the bottom of this article:

"China and U.S. try to jumpstart stalled climate talks

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – World leaders tried to inject momentum into climate change talks on Tuesday but new proposals by China and a rallying cry from U.S. President Barack Obama did little to break a United Nations deadlock.

Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, leaders of the world's top greenhouse gas polluters, had hoped to help foster efforts to forge a new global warming treaty two and a half months before a December deadline.

Speaking at a special U.N. climate change summit in New York, Hu laid out a new plan to tackle China's emissions, tying them to economic growth. But he did not include specific figures, which he could be withholding for future negotiations.

Obama outlined his administration's work on climate since he took office in January and said the United States was committed to act.

But Obama offered no new proposals and did not urge quick U.S. Senate passage of a climate change bill, which many observers see as crucial to reaching an international deal.

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama pledged to offer more aid to help developing countries deal with climate change and repeated his goal of reducing Japanese greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090922/ts_nm/us_climate

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Global warming is not a myth. Pakistan for example, will continually run out of water from lack of mountain glaciers which fills the Indus river. It is not cold enough for the rains to freeze and in winter they will have higher evaporation and flooding. The ground is too dry so when there is water it does not stay and floods. Followed by lower river water the rest of the year and more droughts. This is one example of many.

But hey, if winter was cold where you were last year, that must be the same everywhere on earth right?

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We are not. Global warming is a myth. Last winter was freezing. I'll bet this winter is freezing too.

Keep your head in the sand with the rest of the US. I say better to be safe than sorry. Goodbye oversized American cars and hello nuclear power.

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I watched a bit of his speech on tv. He speaks English rather well. He still looks like a frightened deer in the headlights, though.

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"we're all doomed"

We are not. Global warming is a myth. Last winter was freezing. I'll bet this winter is freezing too.

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Can do easy: Take Japan's manufacturing to China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Philippines...

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If the western nations start seriously cutting emissions now, they will have to be down to zero emissions by 2050, but if they delay until 2020, they will need to cut to zero by 2040. The poorer nations have longer, but all emissions need to get down to zero by 2100.

It's just not going to happen and we're all doomed.

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Japan, the only nation with a shrinking population and increased emissions. Who are they to say what the rest of the world should do?

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Headline should read, "Hatoyama laughed off the world stage."

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If the US, China and India, Russia will not join this CO2 reduction project, Japan endeavor will be useless. On the contrary, manufacturing sectors in Japan will carry the financial burdens in realizing this 25%, thus making them more uncompetitive in worldwide commerce. In the end, Japan small- and medium- scale industries will suffer a lot. Large industries will go to other countries for mass-production bases. Therefore, the 25% reduction in Japan will become 25% addition in other countries.

Japan is contributing only 4.5% of the world's greenhouse gases compare to 24% US and 18% China. 10% reduction commitment of these two countries is already more than 25% reduction commitment of Japan. These two countries should join and commit at least 8% reduction.

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