In Japan, need of fossil fuels pushes climate change [hoax] targets to back seat - The Washington Post

TOKYO — With Japan’s oil and gas plants firing at full capacity, officials here say there is little chance of meeting a pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions significantly over the next decade, a startling retreat for a country that once spearheaded an international agreement on climate change.

The earlier, ambitious target to slash emissions 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 has been overrun by a more urgent, short-term need: to burn fossil fuels and maintain a steady electricity supply in the wake of the country’s abrupt turn away from nuclear power.

Japan, still the world’s third-largest economy, was once the poster child for aggressive environmental policy. It chaired the historic conference 15 years ago that led to the Kyoto Protocol, the world’s first climate pact, and it pioneered clean technology, using decades of research to boost energy efficiency.
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Japan has come to object to the Kyoto agreement because it doesn’t include the United States and China, which are together responsible for 40 percent of the world’s emissions. Japan produces four percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“Japan will not participate into the second commitment” period if Kyoto is extended beyond 2012, Masaru Sato, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in an e-mail, using the common term of a renewal