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Opinion | Climate change: China, Japan and South Korea must work together to end coal use and funding
- All three can boost their economies, and those throughout Asia and beyond, by accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels
- We have a chance in the economic recovery from Covid-19 to create a healthy, resilient and net zero-emissions future for the world
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Humanity’s experience of the Covid-19 pandemic during the past year has prompted an elemental reappraisal of our common priorities. The very air we breathe has taken on greater personal significance and symbolism.
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The face masks we have come to wear to protect against transmission of the virus are a tangible sign of adaptation and sacrifice for the common good. We recognise that, to breathe freely again, we need to work together in a sustained manner with maximum resources, placing our common interest above narrow national priorities.
Now we need to show a similar resolve and take bold, urgent action to secure healthy air for all citizens and future generations by cutting emissions and ending the use and financing of fossil fuels across East Asia, particularly coal. Every major economy in East Asia has already decided to decarbonise by the middle of the century, which is an important first step.
Only through pursuing net zero emissions will we create the good jobs – 63 per cent of the world’s renewable energy jobs are in Asia – economic stability and cleaner air we urgently need to improve human, economic and planetary health. This is how we will thrive and bolster resilience to future shocks – pandemics, typhoons, wildfires, extreme heat and other effects of climate change.
Clean air protects our public health as well as the climate. New research shows that one in five premature deaths around the world – 8.7 million per year – are caused by air pollution emitted from coal, oil and gas.
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City of Smoke: A Mongolian activist and her fight to make air breathable in Ulan Bator
City of Smoke: A Mongolian activist and her fight to make air breathable in Ulan Bator
In Japan, there is a growing coalition of businesses, local governments and civil society impatient to go further, faster. They are asking the government to put in place the policies to enable them to do so by doubling the country’s 2030 renewable energy target to raise the share to 40 to 50 per cent of the electricity mix. This coalition includes 92 well-known Japanese corporations, as well as cities representing two-thirds of the Japanese population.
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