Kambayashi/AP - Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama speaks during his first press conference of the year.

Japan released its New Policy Agenda of Japan on Climate Change in English in mid-December.  (Download the agenda here).   According to their document, it both verified their proposed reductions of 25% and proposed new substantive reductions.

“. . . . Prime Minister Hatoyama stated that the new mid-term target to reduce emissions by 25% compared to 1990 levels was hinged on establishing “a fair and effective international framework in which all major economies participate,” but made no clarification whatsoever of his standards for “fairness.” In fact, perhaps equitability criteria have not yet been defined even within the government. . . .

“The new mid-term target, or “30% reductions below 2005 levels” represents the most stringent of the four options discussed in the Mid-Term Target Review Committee under the former administration. It had once been dismissed because it would have too large an impact on the economy and the policy tools and scale that it called for were unrealistic.”

The U.S. is only proposing a 17% reduction in emissions based on 2005 levels, which is about a 4% reduction based on 1990 levels.  It must be tough for the U.S. government to be “bettered” in this way by countries as small but ambitious as Japan.  Can’t the U.S.  do more?  We need to at least try.  More ideas from the Japanese agenda:

Actually the number of 17% of the U.S. is with respect to 2005.

Vision for a Developed-Developing Country Cooperation Model: For International Contribution by Industry to Climate change Solutions
(1) Industry should also consider ways to “bridge” developed and developing countries. Contributions should be centered on substantively reducing GHG emissions through energy and environmental technology transfer and international intersectoral cooperation and agreement and supplying products that will contribute to creating a global low-carbon consumption society in terms of LCA (life cycle assessment).

(2) Japan, the US and China should launch a model project of developed-developing country cooperation based on public-private partnership in areas including energy conservation, renewable energies and nuclear energy. Reductions generated in the project should be trilaterally accredited among the three countries as offset credits that could be used for the purpose of staying in compliance with domestic schemes.

(3) Furthermore, industry could also look into setting up a new organization provisionally called the Institution for Engineering
Solutions for Climate change, which would be based on public-private partnership to promote the projects described above, to implement the Voluntary Action Plan in wider international dimensions and to collect benchmarking data.

They make a good point below about individuals versus countries (which is also an idea I like since Copenhagen collapsed into political fighting Individuals and their cities and states will make up a huge part of fighting climate change, but how much is possible is yet unknown).

However, in order to employ equalized emissions per capita as an equitability standard, fundamental rules under the Kyoto Protocol [...]

GOP Protest Builds Against EPA Regulating Greenhouse Gases

A storm of Republican protest is erupting over the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouse gases pose a public danger, with the latest wave coming from a state among those most at risk from the effects of climate change.

Republicans are stepping up their efforts to stop climate change legislation. They are also continuing their campaigns of propaganda to create confusion in the public’s mind about global warming.

We really have to keep pushing back at the deniers and climate change skeptics before they do any more harm to public opinion, because they are pulling out all the stops.  Their new campaign is “CO2 is Green”.   This is from Media Matters:

A new group named “CO2 is Green” (really) is contending that “CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 makes Earth green because it supports all plant life. It is Earth’s greatest airborne fertilizer.”  (Astoundingly inaccurate!)

The Washington Post wrote:

The man behind the latest entry to the climate legislation wars is H. Leighton Steward, a veteran oil industry executive, co-author of the “Sugar Busters!” dieting books, and winner of an Environmental Protection Agency award for a report on damage being done to Mississippi wetlands. Now retired, he says he wants to “get the message out there” that carbon dioxide, which the Supreme Court has ruled a pollutant and which most scientists regard as a dangerous greenhouse gas, “is a net benefit for the planet.”

Steward has joined forces with Corbin J. Robertson Jr., chief executive of and leading shareholder in Natural Resource Partners, a Houston-based owner of coal resources that lets other companies mine in return for royalties. Its revenues were $291 million in 2008.

Not only have Steward and Robertson founded “CO2 is Green” to take misinformation to the airwaves, they’ve also launched “Plants Need CO2″ to educate Americans about the joys of carbon pollution.

They have formed two groups — CO2 Is Green designated for advocacy and Plants Need CO2 for education — with about $1 million. Plants Need CO2 has applied for 501(c)(3) tax status, so that contributions would qualify as charitable donations, said Natural Resource Partners general counsel Wyatt L. Hogan, who also serves on the group’s board.

This has to be fought against.  Some kind of climate legislation has to get  passed this year, preferably a tax and dividend bill.  (See the Larson bill in the House. America’s Energy Security Trust Fund Act of 2009).   The cap and trade bill isn’t good enough because it won’t right climate change aggressively enough,  but we can work on making that stronger.

In the meantime, working against us will be this denier cult, which is really driven by money and greed. (Join the CO2 is Green Facebook group here and have some fun setting them straight.)  Wherever people see climate deniers online, my recommendation is to respond to them with as many facts as you can.*   They are using new tactics, straw man arguments, red herrings, blatant lies, you name it, [...]