Voices
in
Japan

poll

Is setting targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions an effective way to reduce the adverse effects of climate change?

31 Comments
© Japan Today

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

31 Comments
Login to comment

Isn't it obvious?

-2 ( +8 / -10 )

Why is “climate change has no averse effects” even an option?

9 ( +22 / -13 )

Boomers will take the planet down with them

2 ( +13 / -11 )

Setting targets in itself won't do much. Hitting the targets might.

19 ( +27 / -8 )

It should be, but no, it's a con. PR. Window-dressing. Just like carbon credit trading and dates to go 'carbon neutral'. They are booting the problem into the future for someone else to fail at delivering.

Just look at what you can do, and do it. Now. Not in 20 years time.

Would a judge be impressed by a criminal who sets themselves a target of going straight at some point in the distant future?

Governments needed to speed the transition to EVs much faster by funding charging point infrastructure and subsidising the cost of electricity. Petrol isn't cheap. It would have motivated people to shift. Car manufacturers should have been ordered to standardise components, globally, to reduce costs. They could still pick their bodyshell and battery tech, but the fundamentals needed to be interchangeable like PC parts.

The US needs to stop using sports and tech and trade and anything else as a political weapon. We need a globalised market to maximise the delivery of green energy products. Pushing up prices and blocking trade slows the uptake, especially in developing countries. Pick fights with China in some other way. Lose the belligerent, nationalist, Trump-style attitude and concentrate on transitioning the whole of the global economy, together.

Most of all, move on and downgrade covid to the status of just another virus via vaccinations as soon as you can. It is sucking up the cash that needs to pay for climate change mediation, building barriers that prevent international co-operation and engagement, and deflecting attention from climate change mediation.

7 ( +11 / -4 )

Targets are pointless if there's no incentive to hit them (or in this case, not hit them). No country or company is going to go out of their way and spend time and resources in order to lower their own profits.

Until less carbon emissions = way more money, or more carbon emissions = way less money (taxes, fees, etc. on those that exceed limits), absolutely nothing will change. Why would it?

13 ( +15 / -2 )

Governments need to stay out of it. They've caused enough trouble already, and just use these phoney targets to pick winners - ie make laws to suit their friends who have enough money to buy politicians and pay the insane compliance costs - costs too high for smaller companies to afford.

-9 ( +6 / -15 )

COVD-19 was doing the job no one could do, stopping us. When we were stopped, the pollution stopped, the air was clear, the sky turned back to blue.

Instead of making the most of it and transitioning, the systems of control that we use are doing everything to go back to business as usual. No one stood up. Anywhere.

Thus we have failed and the consequences, inevitable

9 ( +11 / -2 )

Such targets are meaningless without enforcement. The time when governments could get away with empty pledges they never had any intention of actioning is past, world opinion is starting to hold them to account and countries that are acting will not stand for unfair competition from those failing to act. Carbon and other environmental equalisation taxes and regulations will begin to bite.

8 ( +9 / -1 )

We should also ban Carbon Trading...

8 ( +11 / -3 )

Setting targtets is not enough, we all have to take responsibility for our choices and actions.

Power from new PV panels is down to 1.5 cents/kWh now, beating every other source by huge margins.

These changes must happen now.

I am an American who knows Japan can do it, using all sources.

Good luck.

7 ( +8 / -1 )

Is setting targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions an effective way to reduce the adverse effects of climate change?

More B.S. from the greed driven psychopaths to allay the fears of the simple minded. And from what I understand, it's too late for any measures to mitigate the climatic shift we have set in motion. The climate is an enormous equilibrium of all of the factors which feed into it and shifts slowly over time depending on various changes such as solar insolation (redundant), geological events, and, in our case, the massive overgrowth of an invasive and amazingly destructive species. Our inputs have been very significant and we are seeing big changes in what is a heartbeat of time to our climate system. The heating and weather changes are just the beginning and if the equilibrium is perturbed enough, the global climate could go into chaotic behavior and there will be no predicting anything even in the short term because anything may happen as the system hunts for a new equilibrium. An ice age is not out of the question as unlikely as that may seem now. We may have set in motion what is called an MEE or massive extinction event which have completely reset Earth's biosphere several times in the past and, other than the Chicxulub event, we don't have a good idea why. That may change. For the first time in the history of the Human genepool, it may be good to already be old...

4 ( +6 / -2 )

I think it is probably too late to do anything about our effect on the planet. Even if we cut emissions and other human detrimental effects in half the damage is done. Only possible way is ongoing development of new technologies to clean up the mess we have made.

And optimal use of things like nuclear.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

I’ll illustrate it for you. While you really think you do something substantial and drive not by car but by bicycle to your StarBucks and replace happily your plastic straw by a paper one and are very proud of saving the nature and being nearer CO2 neutral, the family boss in Muslim Africa marries his fourth woman, has eight children with each and they all need suddenly more plastic buckets to carry drinking water and international planes and helicopters as well as fat combustion motor SUVs to deliver the care food and medical packages into their roadless desert areas. Now you may take your calculator at hand and compute how much influence your savings, restrictions and self-implied lower life comfort will bring to your beloved climate goddess. lol

-6 ( +3 / -9 )

Climate has changed from the beginning of time, why is this something new? It started to warm up several hundred years ago and even before that

Oh FFS

0 ( +5 / -5 )

Oh, Sven, Vad tänker du på? "...the family boss in Muslim Africa..."?? really? who lives at, perhaps, a 'subsistence' level growing their own food by hand is responsible for the MASSIVE use of fossil fuels that allow Western countries to build all manner of weapons just to subdue that African should he become jealous of the Western lifestyle which is supported by nothing but the mind bogglingly enormous burning of hydrocarbons into CO? We need nothing but the satellite view of Earth at night and the BRIGHT light of 240 million year old sunlight used just to make us feel SAFE at night from our own kind that emanates glaringly from the 'civilized' countries and the darkness that is Africa to see WHO is driving our dismal future. It ain't the African! And Pogo's 1971 observation, a play on a famous American historical quote from the corrupt financial War of 1812, is worthy of Plato: "We have met the enemy and they is us..."

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Goals don't change anything. They just raise awareness so people can alter their own habits and purchase decisions - which DO change things.

Govts should encourage the desired results by subsidizing preferred choices and penalizing poor choices, until the habits are created and nearly everyone is choosing the preferred methods/products.

For anyone who thinks that CO2 and other greenhouse gases aren't important for climate change, please get educated.

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/global-warming/last-1000-years

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/how-much-will-earth-warm-if-carbon-dioxide-doubles-pre-industrial-levels

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/global-warming/temperature-change

There's 800,000 yrs of data - both temperature and CO2 levels. CO2 isn't the only greenhouse gas, methane is the 2nd most important and there are others, in lesser concentrations which are important.

Scientists believe that Venus is is where the Earth's climate will head if we don't get the greenhouse gases under control. https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2475/nasa-climate-modeling-suggests-venus-may-have-been-habitable/ and https://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/38-Why-is-Venus-so-hot-

0 ( +1 / -1 )

"Setting targets" are fine as long as everyone participates in achieving those targets as equally as possible.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

...methane is the 2nd most important...

Oh yeah! METHANE! Look up 'methane clathrates' and see what MAY happen if it gets just a little too warm and the methane stored in clathrate form over every major oil pool and heavily in the Arctic permafrost releases. It's "GOODBYE" in the SHORT term. The values I have seen for Methane vary, but ten times the 'greenhouse gas' effect over CO is the lowest I have seen and there is a LOT of it in Earth's crust just waiting for us to continue opening the door to its release, and IF it does, maybe not Venus but certainly not a habitable Earth by the plants and creatures now inhabiting it...forgot about the clathrates and, of course, Corporate ain't talking...

2 ( +2 / -0 )

It's something, but it isn't enough to do that and say "Pack it up all, we saved the planet, carry on!".

Actually achieving those goals would be the first step, but even that isn't enough. More punitive measures should be taken for companies that don't hit those targets. If you want to force companies to do the right thing, the ONLY way to do so is hit their profit margins until the right thing makes them more money. Even if you fine them for overproduction of greenhouse gasses, if it is more profitable for them to pay the fine they will just do that.

On an individual level, while less important than what the largest polluters do, there are still measures to be taken that the government can encourage. Incentives should be given to NOT have children, as opposed the opposite happening in many places, including Japan. Having kids is the worst possible thing an individual can do for the planet. Give tax breaks to childfree couples, not growing families.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Will always be a fight against the feudal lords now turned industrial capitalists. They havent changed and abuse their population as peasants on the fields or dumbed down worker drones in the hive The Japanese represent the biggest abuse of capitalism I ever seen it has its place but not in the expediency to be a m race

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Japan accounts for only 3% of the total GHGs released world wide. Even if Japan reduced the GHGs output to zero, its still more effective to get China, USA, India or Russia to reduce their output. Hope Biden will make some change, cause I'm sure China and India don't really care.

Also Japan (and other G-20 countries) should be helping emerging countries create efficient global friendly energy resources, to reduce their GHG emissions as well.

I think the targets need to be global based, not country based.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Temperature increase of 1 degree from 150 years ago TO DATE is not unusual or an amount of concern, and in fact has largely been beneficial to humans.

Temperature FUTURE predictions are unscientific and will almost all be proven wrong, as are almost all predictions humans make about the future.

Read Freeman Dyson, one of the worlds greatest scientists and thinkers.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Yes, but it's by far not enough. Also, making "Climate change has no adverse effects" an option only encourages the spread of misinformation. We literally see those adverse effects everywhere already.

@Alex McLaren

Freeman Dyson was a mathematician. Anyone can have an opinion, but his credentials from a different field don't override those of the majority of climate scientists who have spent their careers observing and researching the matter.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Temperature FUTURE predictions are unscientific and will almost all be proven wrong, as are almost all predictions humans make about the future.

So far most predictions have been overly cautious, and many of the worst case scenarios are already starting to happen.

And not to follow the science is suicide.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

We have passed the tipping point all we can do now is slow down the effects of what's to come. To save earth is to bring the human population to 2 million from 7.2 billion that is currently in. That's a huge cut but that is what it would take. We are killing our planet earth, sad to say but true.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Firstly, there's no actual proof that man's activities have any effect - either good or bad - on the Earth's climate. We are very arrogant to presume that we are so influential.

And secondly, if man's production of CO2 really is having an effect (this only males up 0.03% of the atmospheric gas, remember!), then since China is far and away the worst offender, and yet is not reducing its output, anything the rest of us do is utterly pointless.

If you genuinely believe we need to reduce man-made CO2 then you must support a complete trade embargo on China. If you don't we'll know you are being deceitful. Do you?

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Login to leave a comment

Facebook users

Use your Facebook account to login or register with JapanToday. By doing so, you will also receive an email inviting you to receive our news alerts.

Facebook Connect

Login with your JapanToday account

User registration

Articles, Offers & Useful Resources

A mix of what's trending on our other sites