Japanese Business Can Lead Climate Campaign - Gore
Date: 16-Jan-07
Country: JAPAN
Asked whether he had plans to stand in the 2008 election, Gore ruled it out, adding: "I'm involved in a different kind of campaign."
During a visit to Japan to promote his award-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth", Gore also urged Japan's top business lobby to spark a policy change on global warming by sending a strong message to its US counterparts.
"The Japanese business community, because of the respect with which you are regarded, can have a powerful influence on the shaping of opinions within the US business community," Gore told executives at the Keidanren (Japanese Business Federation).
"When that changes, then US policy will change," he said, urging the members of Keidanren to send the strongest possible message to big business in the United States.
The United States withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, which mandates cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in the 2008-2012 period, saying the agreement would be harmful to the US economy.
As host of the 1997 talks that forged the protocol, the Japanese government has urged major polluters, including the United States, China and India, to work harder to combat climate change, most recently during a visit by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Europe last week.
Japan's own emissions of greenhouse gases amounted to 1.36 billion tonnes in the year to March 2006, up 0.6 percent on the previous year and 14.1 percent adrift of its objective to cut emissions to 6 percent below their 1990 levels.
But Gore said that corporate Japan had a special role to play.
"The business leadership of Japan can lead the way and lead the business community of the world," Gore said.
"Your determination to be a part of the solution can be the key to the world successfully solving this crisis."
More than 330 US cities have endorsed the Kyoto Protocol, in a sign of grassroots support for its aims, Gore said.
