posted 03-14-2002 02:20 AM            

By Ilene R. Prusher

TOKYO: Coral reefs will die from water that's too hot. Polar bears will have less room to roam, crowding some of them out of existence. Birds will start flying an extra mile north each year, and may starve when they get there.

These are among the dire possible consequences of global warming, say climate-change experts. At no time was it clearer that countries should take steps to slow this process than when 150 countries signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. But now, with President George Bush saying the US will not ratify the protocol - which was shaped in part to fit Washington's concerns five years ago - the accord's ultimate effectiveness is in doubt, and many US allies are irritated.

For Japan, a nation of nature-lovers, the shaping of the accord on their soil was a source of pride - and proof that they were still relevant players on the world stage.

"It is absolutely inadmissible for the US, which is the greatest gas-emitting country, to once again turn its back and present something that is against Kyoto Protocol and the framework convention on climate change," says Mie Asaoka, president of the Kiko Network, a Tokyo environmental-umbrella organization representing about 150 Japanese groups.

The clash over how to stop global warming while allowing sluggish economies to prosper occurs at an awkward point in US- Japanese relations. US analysts looking east say that as Japan's economic dominance in Asia diminishes, so will the importance of the US- Japan relationship as a whole.

During Bush's visit here last month, Koizumi gently balked at the president's proposed alternative to the Kyoto agreement, saying that Japan would "like to see further efforts" on the part of the US. While there are no protesters in the streets, there is an air of indignation here over Washington's "do-it-our-way" decision on something that effects the whole globe.

Among the Kiko Network's handouts is a pamphlet with a cartoon of the world. On one end, Koizumi defensively holds up the Kyoto Protocol. On the other, a fiendish-looking Bush seizes a weeping globe in his monster-size hands.

In the eyes of Japan and many US allies, the Bush administration's decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol is one of many signals that Washington is growing increasingly unilateralist in the six months since the Sept 11 attacks on America.

From pulling out of Kyoto - which is in the process of being ratified by the European Union - to labelling Iran, Iraq, and North Korea an "axis of evil" and prime targets in the next phase of the war, America's allies are seeing in the US a growing tendency to act first and consult later.

The Bush administration is offering its own alternative plan, the Clear Skies and Global Climate Change Initiatives, which aides say are more market-sensitive and will reduce the worst air pollutants by 70 per cent while finding a strategy to cut greenhouse gas intensity by 18 per cent over the next 10 years.

Not everyone in Japan is upset with Bush's alternative. Japanese industry has already gone through vigorous energy-saving - and thus environmentally friendly - drives after the two energy crises of the 1970s and 1980s, says Mitsuru Shinozaki, a spokesman for Keidanren, the country's most influential business lobby.

"Any further policy to reduce emissions," he says "will hurt Japanese industrial competitiveness.

posted 03-14-2002 10:14 AM            

Boy... I'd sure hate to hurt someones economic competitiveness just to save the planet from global warming, climate change, a need for adjusting our lifestyles!