Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso will order his ministries to draft a “Green New Deal” this week to counter the twin threats of climate change and the economic downturn, a report said yesterday.
Aso will order a stimulus package focusing on slashing greenhouse gases at a meeting of his global warming advisory panel on Wednesday, the business daily Nikkei Shimbun said citing unnamed government sources.
Japan, which has pledged to reduce carbon emissions by up to 80 percent by 2050, will announce its mid-term target by June, Aso said in his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month.
At Wednesday’s meeting, his government will present plans to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 15 percent from 1990 levels by the year 2020, the Nikkei said.
The panel will canvass opinions from a range of people including business leaders before making formal recommendations to the premier in June, the report said.
The initiative may require a 20-fold increase in tapping solar power and a 40 percent boost in the use of next-generation environmentally friendly cars, it said.
Leaders of the G8 — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US — agreed at their summit last year to cut carbon emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050.
Meanwhile Aso came under fire yesterday day after saying it was time to review the privatization of Japan’s postal services — despite his having supported the move before the last general election.
The postal service was divided into four private firms in 2007 but on Thursday Aso said he believed it was time to revisit the subject and questioned the way the service had been broken up.
Opposition lawmakers yesterday denounced his remarks as “irresponsible” and demanded an early snap election.
“Prime Minister Aso’s comment that at heart he was against the postal privatization is extremely irresponsible,” said Masayuki Naoshima, a senior official of the Democratic Party of Japan.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS