25% Carbon Cut Greenhouse Emissions

JAPAN has stuck to its offer to cut greenhouse emissions greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent by 2020.

The target, based on 1990 levels, was submitted on Tuesday to the UN Climate Change Secretariat under a climate accord worked out by major emitters led by China and the United States last month in Copenhagen.

Environment minister Sakihito Ozawa quoted hope that all countries will submit (a target), but... what's important in order to cut CO2 and to stop global warming is for the United States and China, the greatest emitters, to submit this as saying in a news conference.

Japan had hoped to play a big negotiating role at the climate talks in December with its target, so big emitters such as the United States, China and India join a new pact that goes beyond 2012, when the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol ends. But the Copenhagen talks ended with a weak deal.

Experts say the total cuts offered by rich countries at the talks amounted to no more than 18 per cent and fall far short of the 25-40 per cent UN scientists consider necessary to avert dangerous climate change. China, India, Brazil and South Africa will submit their own climate action plans to the United Nations by Jan 31.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's forecast showed that if developed nations reduced their emissions by between 25 percent and 40 percent of 1990 levels between 2012 and 2020, it would increase the likelihood that the Earth's average temperature would not rise more than 2 degrees this century.