Jan 20, 2021
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has pledged that his country will become carbon neutral by 2050. “Responding to climate change is no longer a constraint on economic growth,” he said in October, “I declare we will aim to realize a decarbonized society.”
While this promise is both welcome and ambitious, Japan’s pledge comes nearly a year after the European Union, which in 2019 proposed a climate law that would create a legally binding target of net zero carbon by 2050. Further, despite its green rhetoric, Japan’s climate change record at home and abroad has been mixed at best. To accomplish Suga’s ambitious goals, Japan will need to learn from other countries and pursue major political and economic reforms.
Numerous tanks containing contaminated water from the stricken reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant occupy a large portion of the site's premises in October. January 4, 2021 Fifty-five percent of voters in a survey expressed opposition to the government’s plan to release treated contaminated water from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear…
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Takaaki Kajita, president of the Science Council of Japan, speaks to reporters after meeting with Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in Tokyo on 16 October 2020. Kyodo via AP Images
Japan’s top science advice group battles government over independence and identity
Jan. 7, 2021 , 4:10 PM
After months of political skirmishing, the Japanese government’s top scientific advisory council finds itself embroiled in a two-front struggle with the nation’s elected leaders. One battle centers on Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s unprecedented decision to block the appointment of several scholars to the governing body of the Science Council of Japan (SCJ), the nation’s equivalent of a national science academy. The other involves a proposal from Suga’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to convert SCJ, now a part of the government, into an independent entity at least partly responsible for raising its own funds.
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