The country now has a central-bank boss who understands the deflationary problems far better than his predecessors (see article); profits are soaring; and bad debts have been sufficiently reduced that in important ways Japan's biggest companies are nearing the end of the post-bubble clean-up.The reduction in debts is striking.
Strikingly, all this cost accounting totally ignores the potential benefits of new rules -- clean air, reductions in work hours lost to injury or illness, safe financial markets, business opportunities, so on - a sharp departure from the cost/benefit approach taken by earlier reforms and making it far less "public interest" friendly.
We also need to accelerate and scale up investments in poverty reduction, clean technology and ecosystem management, not to mention education.
The scores were calculated by measuring the parties' policies on clean energy, pollution reduction, and environmental protection, and comparing them with the 40 tests set out in ACF's national agenda for 2016.
"We need to make a strong case for a renewable future in terms of clean air, carbon reduction and green jobs to people, communities and the UK as a whole," he says.
While some environmental innovations do provide clean energy, the reduction in waste is far greater suggesting environmental innovations tend to reduce negative consequences more than provide positive contributions externally.
It's not that climate change, or other social causes that I have received e-blasts for this holiday season (poverty reduction, clean water, education for girls in developing countries) is any laughing matter.
For most, clean, efficient catalytic reduction was observed without the need for extensive further optimization (Table 2, entries 1 7), clearly indicating the generality of this water-tolerant methodology.
Urgent action is needed to reverse this trend if we are to ensure the necessary food production for future generations, mitigation of climate change, provision of clean groundwater, and reduction of biodiversity loss.
Further clean energy cost reductions, confidence that policies are producing larger than expected emissions reductions, and other factors will inevitably prove to leaders that they can do more before 2030 than they are prepared to detail in 2015.
