Japan will have to impose carbon taxes and other tough measures on the industrial sector to meet its long-term goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the environment minister said Wednesday. Ichiro Kamoshita, who will host a meeting of environment ministers from top industrialized countries this coming weekend, said such steps could even come sooner if it appears Japan won't meet its Kyoto Protocol reduction targets. Japan is struggling to meet obligations under the Kyoto global warming pact to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Japan's industrial sector currently faces only voluntary restrictions on emissions. Kamoshita said policy choices included a carbon tax on emissions and a so-called “cap-and-trade” system under which companies or industries buy and sell the rights to pollute beyond mandatory limits. “If there are indications that we're not going to achieve that 6 percent, then earlier rather than later, we're going to consider and introduce various methods,” Kamoshita told reporters. Japan's top industries have long argued against mandatory emissions reductions, saying the current voluntary system under which they set their own targets is sufficient. Critics, including some European countries, say such a system runs the danger of not cutting emissions enough to avert an environmental disaster scientists predict if global temperatures rise too much. Kamoshita, whose ministry supports a more aggressive fight against emissions than the powerful Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry, said moving beyond the voluntary system is inevitable if the world is going to meet a proposed interim target of cutting emissions between 25 percent and 40 percent by 2020. “Voluntary actions alone are not sufficient to achieve that goal,” he said. “That means that we will have to introduce incentives to encourage industry to make reductions.” He added that industrial leaders in Japan appeared to be moving closer to accepting such measures. The growing acceptance of mandatory industrial reductions in Japan comes as U.N.-led talks are racing to complete a massive global warming treaty to succeed Kyoto's first phase at the end of 2012. Nations have agreed they need to wrap up the agreement bythe end of 2009, but they have far to go on agreeing how to set national reduction targets and how much rapidly developing - and heavily polluting - nations such as China should be required to rein in emissions. Japan will host the environmental meeting in the western city of Kobe from Saturday to Monday. The Group of Eight nations participating are Japan, Germany, France, the United States, Italy, Canada, Britain and Russia.
