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Green campaigners slam japan over global warming - demonstration outside japanese embassy
15 October 1997
10 am Wednesday 15 October 1997
Outside the Japanese Embassy, 101 Piccadilly, London W1
Placard-carrying demonstrators - including Japanese nationals - will today protest outside the Japanese Embassy over Japan's wholly inadequate response to the threat of global climate change, and its failure to show international leadership ahead of the UN Summit on Climate Change which it hosts in December [1]. Japan has offered to reduce its climate-changing carbon dioxide emissions by a mere 5 per cent by 2010 - far less than that required to tackle the serious threats posed, and significantly less than that offered by the European Union [2].
Campaigners will carry placards with slogans in English and Japanese such as “5 per cent is not enough” and carrying images of Mount Fuji engulfed by a huge wave. The protest is part of an international campaign to urge Japan to take effective action to combat climate change ahead of the Summit in Kyoto.
Dr Patrick Green, Climate Change Campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said:
“Cuts in carbon dioxide emissions are urgently needed if the world is to be spared the terrible costs of dangerous climate change. Major industrialised countries must now provide decisive leadership not half-hearted compromise. Japan has a special responsibility because it will host the Climate Summit and needs to do much better than offer a paltry 5 per cent cut”.
NOTES TO EDITORS:
[1] The UN Climate Change Summit takes place in Kyoto, Japan, 1-10 December.
[2] Japan has pledged to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 5 per cent by 2010(based on 1990 levels), whereas the European Union has agreed a 15 per cent cut (of a number of greenhouse gases including methane and CO2) by 2010. Friends of the Earth is calling for a 20 per cent cut by 2005.
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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust
Last modified: Jun 2008
