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Harsh Climate: France, Japan Struggle With Climate Plans, Too

The oft-repeated meme is that, almost alone among developed economies, the U.S. finds it exceedingly tough to do anything about climate change, while the rest of the rich world steadily cleans up. The Senate’s contorted debate over the energy and climate bill only adds to that impression.


But a thumbs-down from the public (AP)

But is it accurate? Take France, a poster child on the energy front even for Republicans. Details are finally emerging about the country’s planned “carbon tax,” to be put in place next year. And the idea is anything but popular.



Environmentalists are dismayed because the modest tax will do next to nothing to change consumption habits. But it is enough to rile up French consumers; public opinion polls over the weekend suggested about 66% of French are opposed to the measure, even though it will theoretically be offset by tax breaks in other areas.

So a small, focused, revenue-neutral tax increase on an already heavily-taxed consumer good, in a country that prides itself on “global citizenship,” has sparked a popular backlash. No wonder the Obama administration’s more ambitious energy and climate package is running into trouble.

Things are no easier in Japan, home to the Kyoto Protocol which started the whole business of global climate deals. The incoming administration is sticking to its guns with tough targets for reducing emissions of greenhouse-gases, despite warnings from the business community (and inside government) that the plan will be expensive and hard to pull off.

Some of the opposition from business groups is par for the course. But other companies, such as Toyota and Honda, could be expected to benefit from the government’s big push to put cleaner cars on the road. No matter: Top execs at both carmakers warned today that the new government’s targets would be “difficult to reach,” according to the WSJ.

All eyes are on the U.S ahead of the big climate summit in Copenhagen in December. But that doesn’t mean the rest of the world has found the magic recipe to promote economic growth and curb emissions.

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    • Damn, certainly interesting info. Where will I find that subscription?

      Mary Swingfield
      rf scrambler

    • This article misses the basic fact that the EU has had a cap-and-trade progrmame for CO2 emissions in place since 2005, covering electricity generation as well as heavy industry (including the refineries and steel makers mentioned in the article). Taxing an already capped quantity is pointless, and this is the reason for the exemptions mentioned in the article. In fact, the motivation for the tax is precisely to introduce a measure targetting emissions not easily included in the cap-and-trade programme. Meanwhile, the stringency of the cap-and-trade programme exceeds what is proposed in Waxman-Markey by some margin.

      Put differently, the whole discussion of France in this article is irrelevant.

      The comment above about the EU renewables agreement and nuclear is incorrect; a quick google on qualifying technologies for the EU 2020 renewables target will confirm this.

    • Sweden generates its electricity from hydro and nuclear. France from nuclear. Neither is embracing wind, solar and bio-fuel renewables.

      France wouldn't sign the EU renwables agreement until nuclear was declared a renewable as adding wind would increase CO2 emissions as they require CO2 emitting gas as a backup.

      The US EIA's (Energy Informantion Agency) studies of both the LIeberman and Waxman bills tell the same message as France is telling: You do minimum damage to the economy if you build zero CO2 emission plants such as nuclear, coal with CCS, and biofuel. Note that wind and solar are excluded by the EIA as the gas backup makes them a high CO2 emission source of electricity.

      Rather than letting the marketplace decide, congress has decided to pick wind and solar, the worst possible solutions that drive costs up, destroy jobs and prevent us from meeting CO2 reduction goals(you can't get to 80% reduction with wind and gas).

    • Scientific studies of the overall net CO2 emissions for various energy sources (the one linked below being just one example) show that nuclear's overall net emissions are ~2% as much as coal, ~5% as much as natural gas, and similar to renewable sources. The calculated net emissions account for all parts of the energy generation process, including uranium mining, uranium enrichment, fuel processing and fabrication, plant construction, plant decommissioning, and all waste management and disposal activities.

      As for the French's management of used nuclear fuel, not a single person has been killed or sickened as a result of France's nuclear waste. In fact, nuclear power plants in general, in all Western countries, have never killed a menber of the public, or had any measurable impact on public health, over the industry's entire 40_ year history. In stark contrast, fossil fuel power generation is know to cause 25,000 deaths ANNUALLY in the US alone; hundreds of thousands worldwide. That along with global warming. There is simply no comparison. Nuclear's health and environmental impacts are negligible compared to those of fossil fuels.

      Nuclear is a "clean" energy source (like renewables), under any rational definition.

    • How France manages its spent nuclear fuel. ?

      Vitrification has become the standard method used for the immobilisation of high active nuclear waste worldwide. Countries such as France, USA, Russia and the UK among others are using borosilicate glass formulations in order to encapsulate both civil and military wastes.

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