News Service from House Harris

EUR: 'George W. Aso' savaged by greens at UN climate talks

BONN, Germany, June 10 AFP - Green groups at the UN climate talks blasted Japan on Wednesday for setting what they called pitifully low targets for curbing its emissions of greenhouse gases.

Activists unveiled a giant photo of "George W. Aso", a composite portrait of former US president George W. Bush - a bogey figure to environmentalists - and Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso.

And they carried out a mock awards ceremony, complete with dinosaur backdrop, in which Japan was honoured as "special fossil of the day".

Greenpeace accused Aso of kowtowing to heavy industry by failing to set a tougher figure.

It calculated that Aso's goal could help to doom Earth to catastrophic warming of three degrees celsius.

"It appears that the Japanese government is happy to say goodbye to half of its famous beech trees by the end of the century, to live with devastating impacts such as food shortages and super typhoons - and is willing to accept the loss of Y7.6 trillion ($A97.13 billion) a year of assets," said Yurika Ayukawa of Greenpeace International.

"That's what a 3 degrees celsius rise could mean for Japan."

"We have waited a long time for Japan to finally inform the world about its emissions plans; and today we were presented something dangerously lacking any level of ambition," said WWF's Kim Carstensen.

Aso, speaking in Tokyo, said Japan planned to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 15 per cent by 2020 compared with 2005.

This would translate into cut of eight per cent from 1990, the benchmark year used in UN talks for tackling climate change beyond 2012, when the current provisions of the Kyoto Protocol expire.

Under Kyoto, Japan promised to reduce its 1990 emissions by six per cent by the end of 2012.

Carstensen said he worried that the Japanese figure - largely mirroring an aim set down by the United States - would drain pressure on other industrialised countries at negotiations, due to end in Copenhagen in December, for crafting a new treaty on climate change.

Asked to comment on Aso's package, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Yvo de Boer said he was at a loss for words.

"I think for the first time in two and a half years on this job, I don't know what to say," he said in response to a question at a press conference.

He did volunteer a general observation that pledges notched up by industrialised countries so far were way short of what scientists say is needed.

In 2007, the Nobel-winning organisation of climate scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change put forward an array of scenarios for tackling climate change.

Under the most ambitious scenario, industrialised countries would make emissions cuts of 25 to 40 per cent by 2020 over 1990, thus pegging warming to two degrees celsius compared with pre-industrial times.

But only the European Union (EU) has come close to such figures, targeting a reduction of 20 per cent by 2020, with the offer of deepening this to 30 per cent if other advanced economies follow suit.

Both the United States and Japan experienced a major growth in emissions from 1990 to the middle part of this decade. Japan is seven per cent above its 1990 levels while the US is around 15 per cent above it, although the impact of the recession is likely to cause these figures to decrease, say experts.

By shifting the baseline from 1990 to 2005, Japan provides a "smokescreen" for its failure to correct its carbon pollution, said Carstensen.

Greenpeace said the combined reduction targets put forward so far by industrialised countries amounted to a fall in emissions of "only five to 12 per cent" by 2020 over 1990, which would stoke levels of greenhouse gases that would lead to a three degrees celsius warming.

Japan - the world's number two economy, and the fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases - argues it has already achieved a highly energy-efficient lifestyle and industrial infrastructure.