Japan’s new environment minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, pledged on Sunday to mobilise young people to push his coal-dependent country towards a low-carbon future by making the fight against climate change “sexy” and “fun.”
Koizumi was speaking on the eve of a United Nations climate summit in New York where activists plan to float a blimp showing prime minister Shinzo Abe emerging from a bucket of coal to protest Japan’s pans to build new coal-fired power plants.
“In politics there are so many issues, sometimes boring. On tackling such a big-scale issue like climate change, it’s got to be fun, it’s got to be cool. It’s got to be sexy too,” Koizumi told a news conference in New York.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has told governments they should only turn up to the summit if they came armed with more ambitious plans to cut carbon emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement to avert runaway global warming.
Guterres has also urged governments not to build any new coal power plants after 2020 – setting him at odds with Japan, which is the only G7 country to be adding coal-fired power generation capacity. Japan’s government and banks also play an important role in financing new coal plants elsewhere in Asia.
Independent.co.uk