The weakness of Fukuda's (and Japan's) carbon campaign

As the Fukuda government has insisted at every chance it has to remind Japanese citizens and foreign governments that the focus of this summer's G8 summit in Hokkaido will be climate change policy. Tokyo is eager to be at the forefront of the quest for a post-Kyoto climate change pact.

This weekend Mr. Fukuda took this message to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

(Incidentally, this week's meeting brought to mind "Ringing of Revolution," a song by radical folk singer Phil Ochs — nothing like a gala fest of the high and mighty on Swiss mountaintop while in the outside world the world economic system as we know it comes crashing down.)

In his speech at a closed meeting, Mr. Fukuda reiterated that climate change will be the main theme of the summit, warned darkly about the consequences of climate change, and explained his government's three-part approach on climate change policy — (1) a post-Kyoto framework, (2) international environmental cooperation, and (3) technological innovation.

All well-intentioned, all important, but ultimately mostly irrelevant, for a couple reasons.

First, as former UN official Shashi Tharoor, who attended the Fukuda address, wrote in his Davos Diary at Foreign Policy's Passport blog, "...The number of empty seats at the half-dozen tables around the PM testified to the declining salience of Japan, a country that two decades ago was seen as the world's economic powerhouse and, bluntly, no longer is." Mr. Fukuda and other Japanese officials speak before international audiences, everyone nods in agreement, and then moves on to more important matters and actors. Japan's good intentions and clever ideas are not enough to make the rest of the world pay attention.

Beyond Japan's undersized international presence, there is a much more concrete reason for Japan's environmental leadership being stillborn: forcing the world to rethink its carbon emissions means in practical terms forcing the US (its most significant ally) and China (its largest trading partner) to change their economic systems drastically. Does anyone seriously think that Japan or any other one country will be able to make this happen? Change will happen when both the US and China change domestically and become willing to make radical changes in how they use energy, in the process taking the lead internationally on climate change.

Japan might play a niche role in developing energy-efficient technologies and sharing them with the world, but I have a hard time envisioning Japan in the driver's seat, forcing its partners to make substantial compromises that will enable progress on reducing carbon emissions.

Sarko and Abe

Glamorous romantic life aside, I find the parallels between former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and French President Nicolas Sarkozy intriguing. (I previously explored this theme in this post from last July.)

The parallel came to mind once again when I read this post by Arthur Goldhammer.

Commenting on a recent Sarkozy press conference, Goldhammer wrote:

...The "politics of civilization" was not an idle phrase to be forgotten after the New Year's greetings. Now the borrowing from Edgar Morin is openly affirmed. The intention is to infuse politics with poetry, to eschew the pallid practice of "governance," that wan neologism, in favor of what de Gaulle would have called grandeur. Sarko's grandeur partakes not of glory, however, but of the affective. The words "love" and "value" loom large.

I was immediately reminded of Mr. Abe's efforts to sugarcoat his ideology with "affective" terminology, the most prominent term being, of course, that ubiquitous Abe adjective "beautiful." It seems that like M. Sarkozy, Mr. Abe sought to transcend the "governance" of his predecessors by appealing to the deeper values that he and his comrades believe all Japanese share.

However, one difference is that Mr. Abe, as prime minister, was responsible for "governance" and all the messiness it entails. The grandeur of the French presidency seems to give M. Sarkozy some room with which to muse about these subjects; indeed, it might well be a requirement of the job.

(UPDATE: As noted by MTC in the comments, the more obvious comparison for the frenetic M. Sarkozy is, of course, Mr. Koizumi. Agreed. And M. Sarkozy is obviously a much more adept politician than the hapless Mr. Abe. My point is simply that Messrs. Abe and Sarkozy think about their nations' pasts, presents, and futures in similar terms.)

Meanwhile, in the same press conference M. Sarkozy proposed that the G8 be expanded to the G13, with the new members being Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, India, and China. This might very well make the summit meaningful again, if not more effective (the G8's ineffectualness is, I think, as much a function of overambitious agendas as of the roster of attendees).

I expect that this proposal will not be popular in Tokyo. As anyone who has seen Japanese media coverage of preparations for the July G8 summit in Hokkaido knows, Japanese elites take the G8 seriously. They are proud of Japan's membership and would undoubtedly be extremely reluctant to make this exclusive club that much less exclusive. And given that China would be included in an expanded summit, I can easily imagine that the Japanese government is in no hurry to see group expanded, especially considering China's role in keeping Japan out of that most exclusive of international clubs, the permanent membership of the UN Security Council.