Dear Peter,


You¹ve asked some really important questions here and I hope someone has the answer! I certainly don¹t, but just a few observations on both Australia and Japan. There may have been a school children-led display of activism on climate change this past week in Australia, but there is an almost complete absence of political leadership and activism on the issue coming from the coalition government of Liberals and Nationals who are beholden to special interests in the farming and industrial communities. Note Scott Morrison¹s absence from the UN Climate Action summit in New York this week even though he was actually in the United States at the time having Œpal-to-pal¹ Œpow wows¹ with Trump. Morrison is now warning Australian children against Œneedless¹ climate anxiety [See https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/sep/25/morrison-responds-to -greta-thunberg-speech-by-warning-children-against-needless-climate-anxiety ]. You can deduce his position on climate change from his comment. So Australia is no white knight in terms of climate change activism and should not be held up as an example for other countries to follow, particularly given the huge amount of global-warming coal that the country exports and the continuing destruction of woodland and forests for farming.


Regarding Japan, it seems to me that Abe and his government¹s performance on this issue is pretty much 'show¹ rather than 'substance¹and it is still promoting coal-fired power generation. The following article is a good read:


https://thediplomat.com/2019/04/does-japans-new-climate-change-strategy-go- far-enough/. In practice, the government seems to be leaving the most constructive initiatives to the private sector (https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/06/japan-leading-business-climate-engagement-will-ambitious-policies-follow)
while the nuclear power issue is mired in political difficulties. Let¹s see if the new Environment Minister can make the subject Œsexy¹ as he has promised [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-un-koizumi/koizumis-sexy -words-on-climate-change-ring-hollow-for-some-in-japan-idUSKBN1W90IJ].



Best wishes,



Aurelia George Mulgan
University of New South Wales
Canberra


Australia



On 24/9/19, 11:27 pm, "ssj-forum-bounces@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp on behalf of SSJ-Forum Moderator" <ssj-forum-bounces@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp on behalf of ssjmod@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp> wrote:

From: Peter Cave <Peter.Cave@manchester.ac.uk> Date: 2019/09/20 Dear Forum Members Today (Friday 20 Sept), large climate strikes are going on worldwide. As I write at 9 a.m. UK time, there are reports of 300,000 people on the streets in Australia (a country of about 25 million population), for example. No doubt there will be similarly large numbers in many other countries. In Japan, on the other hand, a country of 126 million people, severely affected by the climate crisis in all sorts of ways, including more frequent and more powerful typhoons (one just this month) and heavy rain resulting in disastrous floods last year, very little seems to be happening. When I look at the Asahi Shinbun (Japanese) website, there does not seem to be any mention of climate strikes, even overseas. The same goes for the NHK top page. UK reporters also report that not much is happening in Japan. Why not? Just to continue the Japan-Australia comparison, both countries are liberal democracies with a highly educated population, impressive universities and scientists, and a free press, and both are being significantly affected by the climate crisis. So why the huge difference? It's not as if people in Japan are completely unaware of the issues. The term 'global warming' has been current for decades, and ordinary people I know in Japan seem quite happy to acknowledge climate change. I would be interested to see what Forum members think. I would also like to ask a related question about Japanese politics. I have not been following politics in Japan closely for a while (aside

>from watching the news for the seven months I was in Japan during 2018),

but my impression is that green issues hardly feature in Japanese politics. To me, this seems quite surprising, given that (a) in some other countries, Green parties have been making significant strides - notably in Germany, where it is even reported that they are on a trajectory to displace the Social Democrats as the second largest party (b) you would think that this might be a good issue for Japan's lacklustre opposition parties to seize and try to make their own, to give them some much needed cutting edge. Is my impression about green politics in Japan wrong? If it is right, why don't green issues feature more? I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Peter Peter Cave Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies SALC, University of Manchester Samuel Alexander Building Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)161 275 3195 www.manchester.ac.uk/research/peter.cave/