EDITORIAL from the Korea Times on Nov. 7)

Cuts on CO2

Policy-making is the art of harmonizing ideals and reality, and nothing seems to
fit this better than setting environmental targets.

The latest example are the government moves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by
4 percent by 2020 from 2005, a fall officials say is the maximum level a
developing country like Korea can strive for. President Lee Myung-bak also said
??? rightly ??? it's better to set a goal at ``a little bit ideal level'' and
seek to meet it.
Yet few outside of the government appear to agree with Lee. Industrial lobbies
say the government does not understand the reality, in which it would be
difficult for the manufacturing-heavy Korean economy to even freeze the emission
level at the 2005 level in 11 years time.
At the other extreme, environmentalists criticize Seoul's plan as too timid,
stressing the carbon-cut objective should be at least 25 percent, as are the
cases of Japan and some European countries.
The domestic industrialists' complaints are not entirely unjustifiable, as Korea
is classified as a ``non-Appendix I'' country that has no obligation to
voluntarily curtail carbon emissions. If the plan is put into action, this would
result in a lot of pain and inconvenience for corporations and individuals. But
the business associations are wrong to say ??? or threaten ??? that the measure
would drive out more companies to less developed and less environmentally
regulated countries in Southeast Asia, adversely affecting the nation's economic
growth and employment situations.
That Korea has to actively cut down on greenhouse gas emissions is not just
because it will host the G20 summit next year or because President Lee pledged
Seoul would be an ``early mover'' at this year's meeting, but because this
country is the ninth-biggest emitter of CO2 and other globe-warming gases, and
more importantly, the temperature on the Korean Peninsula has gone up twice as
fast as the rest of the world over the past decade or so.
The business community's complaint that the Japanese government is leaving the
matter to the private sector only reveals the wide gap in environmental
consciousness of firms between the two countries. The time has long past for
Korean businesses to practice the much-wrought adage of having to turn a crisis
into opportunities, and tackle this issue with a more positive stance and
longer-term perspectives.
That said, what's more worrisome than the government's target itself is whether
the measures it announced would be practicable enough to produce desired results.
Its plans to slap heavy congestion fees on vehicles entering into the crowded
city centers during rush hours or encourage ``car-sharing'' among commuters,
while laudable in intention, have been attempted before but shelved in the face
of strong resistance from the people. Equally dubious is the measure to reflect
energy efficiency on housing prices, as the home value here has been swayed by
factors unrelated with the properties, such as school zones and re-development
programs.
A far stronger and more sophisticated combination of penalties and incentives
will be needed to make corporations and individuals turn more
environment-conscious and better comply with the government policy. A better and
more effective way of reaffirming the seriousness of the government, both here
and abroad, is to put it into a special law that will have to include, among
other things, specific emission targets and industrial tools, such as a
cap-and-trade system.
Abroad, Seoul's green growth strategy has so far been sneered at as
``greenwash,'' meaning this country has actually focused its investment on
conventional smokestack industries. In this regard, the Lee administration's
latest move smacks of a pre-emptive step prior to next month's Climate Change
Conference in Copenhagen.
Scientists share the view, however, that the more passive a country is in
preventing climate change, the greater the damage it will have to suffer.
(END)