January turned out to be a month of extreme weather, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in a recent report. In southern Minnesota, the temperature dropped to minus 53.9 C on Jan. 30, breaking the previous U.S. low temperature record of minus 48.9 C. What the WMO calls "high-impact weather" events also gripped the southern hemisphere in a totally different way. Australia, for instance, had its warmest January on record with Adelaide hitting 46.6 C, the hottest reading for any Australian state capital.
The fact that many parts of the northern hemisphere were recently enveloped by bone-chilling cold waves may make us think that global warming is not progressing anymore. It is. What is really happening is an increase in extreme weather occurrences caused by climate change. In recent weeks, the United States saw the Midwest suffering from extreme cold even while warmer-than-usual temperatures continued in Alaska -- and in the peripheral zones of the Arctic as well. Last summer, Japan, too, had extreme weather.
Global efforts to address global warming are underway. Needless to say, the foremost framework for tackling climate change is the Paris Agreement that was adopted by nearly 200 countries in 2015 and came into effect in 2016. The accord has a long-term goal of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions enough to hold the increase in global average temperature to below 2 C above pre-Industrial Revolution levels and even making further efforts to limit it to 1.5 C above the pre-industrial benchmark. To achieve the goal, all signatory countries to the agreement are required to "put forward their best efforts through nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and to strengthen these efforts in the years ahead." In 2020 and beyond, they will need to regularly update their national climate commitments.
However, the Paris Agreement has no detailed rules for countries to set forth their NDC programs. As a result, they began employing modalities for NDC compilation on their own with different base years, target years and benchmarks. On this point, there was a big step forward in December 2018 when the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP24) took place in Poland. The participating countries agreed on a rulebook that outlines how their NDC actions should be planned, implemented and reviewed. The COP24 agreement now makes NDC efforts transparent and comparatively measurable.
Yet, the adoption of a rulebook hardly guarantees that greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced soon. It was already known from NDC commitments submitted by countries by the spring of 2016 that greenhouse gas emissions worldwide would amount to 56.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2030, compared with about 49 billion tons in 2010. If greenhouse gas emission levels keep rising at such a pace, according to the climate change scenario set by scientists from all over the world who have worked for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Paris Agreement's goal of keeping the global temperature rise in the 21st century below 2 C becomes impossible to achieve.
Duties of large emitters
After the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, a report issued by a private-sector nongovernmental organization caused some degree of optimism regarding climate change trends. In the report, the Global Carbon Project (GCP) estimated that global emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel use and industrial activity was "nearly flat" in 2014-16. At the time, the GCP noted that the 2016 trend "marks a clear break from the rapid emissions growth of 2.3 percent per year of the previous decade." But its latest annual analysis released in December 2018 commented: "After a temporary slowdown, global carbon dioxide emissions rose 1.6 percent in 2017, and new data indicates emissions are on track to rise more than 2 percent in 2018 on the back of sustained increases in coal, oil and gas use."
Today's average temperature on the surface of the Earth -- global mean warming -- is said to exceed 1 C above the pre-industrial level. The weather events that hit Japan last summer and this winter's record low temperatures in various parts of the northern hemisphere most likely resulted from such warming. To keep global warming by the end of this century below 2 C compared to the pre-industrial level, the world has to reverse the upward trend seen in 2017 and 2018. And, to do so, countries need to set and realize better climate targets than their earlier NDC commitments.
China and the United States must reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, which are the world's largest. In 2015, China accounted for 28.4 percent of the world's emissions, while the United States accounted for 15.4 percent. (Japan's figure was 3.5 percent.) The reason the Paris Agreement was praised as an epoch-making breakthrough is that both China and the United States signed the pact, obliging themselves to contribute to climate change mitigation.
However, U.S. President Donald Trump has declared that he will withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement. Generally speaking, China continues to be positive about the agreement. But dark clouds are looming over what China will eventually do regarding the climate agreement due to the currently worrying international circumstances. Such concern reflects the fact that relations between Washington and Beijing have become so tense that it can be said that a new Cold War has begun.
The United States is threatening to withdraw from the climate deal, as mentioned, and waging a trade war with China. Can we remain assured, even under such circumstances, that China will adhere to its Paris commitment to seriously reducing greenhouse gas emissions?
Both Japan and European countries will likely have to tread a considerably difficult path in terms of their relationships with the United States and China. Japan and European countries, both sharing values with the United States, are required to cooperate with the United States in preventing an increasingly authoritarian China from achieving technological hegemony and establishing military supremacy in the world.
However, when it comes to the issue of climate change, Japan and European allies of the United States have to talk Washington into remaining in the Paris Agreement while persuading Beijing to do its utmost to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
This year, Japan will host a summit of Group of 20 leaders in Osaka in June. Against this background, holding the presidency of the G20, Japan needs to make strategic and careful diplomatic approaches to both the United States and China. Japan, while continuing to share many common interests and objectives with the United States as in the past, should persuade Washington and Beijing to separate the new Cold War from the climate change battle.
To build persuasive power, Japan must first deal squarely with its own climate challenges. In 2015, shortly before the adoption of the Paris Agreement, Japan submitted its NDC plan to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent from 2013 levels by 2030. Honestly speaking, when I heard the news about the plan, I had nothing to say but that it was "half-hearted." To what extent will Japan increase its NDC commitment? It now has to answer this question.
What Japan needs to do is obvious. It should further increase the use of renewable energy beyond what it pledged in the NDC plan. It goes without saying that solar and wind power will become increasingly important energy sources.
There is another important source of renewable energy the Japanese government should tap in earnest to realize a substantial increase in its use. That is geothermal power. Japan has many volcanoes, meaning that it is one of the countries in the world with great geothermal power potential. Despite such potential, geothermal power currently accounts for a mere 0.3 percent of the country's total electric power output. The main reason for this is government restrictions on the development of geothermal power generation. Those restrictions exist because most of the country's spots suitable for geothermal power plants are located within national parks or near popular hot spring resorts. In 2012, the restrictions were eased to some extent. Nevertheless, the government's "Projected Energy Mix" for 2030 envisages increasing geothermal power's share of overall power generation to just 1.0 percent.
The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has been actively supporting geothermal power development projects in foreign countries, such as Kenya and Indonesia. JICA relies on Japanese companies for most of the equipment it procures for those overseas projects because they have world-class geothermal power technology.
When I was the president of JICA, I visited foreign geothermal power plants built with Japanese official development assistance. During my tours of such sustainable and renewable power spots, I always wondered why Japan was unable to do at home what it was so actively promoting abroad. My conclusion, which remains unchanged even now, was that Japan would be able to strikingly increase the volume of geothermal power once the government decided to go all out for the promotion of such renewable energy -- and, of course, help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Special to The Yomiuri Shimbun
Tanaka is president of the Tokyo-based National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), a post he assumed in April 2017. Previously, he was a University of Tokyo professor specializing in international politics. He was president of the Japan International Cooperation Agency from 2012 to 2015 and vice president of the University of Tokyo from 2009 to 2012.
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