by techno
Sun Jun 22nd, 2008 at 02:40:58 AM EST
When my book "Elegant Technology" was published in late 1992, I included a claim--on the COVER--that Industrial Redesign was the preferred environmental strategy of Japan and Western Europe.* Oh, the flak I took for that. The real estate bubble had just popped in Japan and the gloating in the financial press in USA was so intense, the idea that Japan had anything to teach us was considered laughable. I even wished I could redo the cover because in the post-bubble Japan, the changed intellectual atmosphere would destroy sales.
Funny how predictions based on Institutional Analysis turn out.
Japan Poised as Green Leader
NATHAN GARDELS
June 17, 2008
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-gardels/japan-poised-as-green-lea_b_107713.html
TOKYO -- Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's announcement that Japan will cut carbon emissions by 60-80 per cent by 2050 sets a serious tone for the upcoming G-8 Summit at Lake Toya, Japan.
Even if real action remains stymied in the lame duck days of the Bush administration, Japan's leadership sends a signal to the world that the rich industrialized countries -- whose emissions accumulated the "stock" of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that are causing global warming -- accept their responsibility. This is the precondition required for developing countries like China and India -- responsible for massive new "flows" of industrial exhaust -- to join any common global program beyond the Kyoto Protocol to stem climate change.
The summit comes in advance of the convergence of a major economic and geopolitical shift in the world.
Unlike past oil shocks, this current bout of price increases is here to stay. The long term demand trend for oil is ever upward because of rapid growth of India, China and the "rising rest." Though there will be dips, the price of oil is not likely to go down, only up. And up.
The next American president, whether Barack Obama or John McCain, will embrace the spirit of Kyoto, if not the actual protocol. Both of them have made this clear in their campaigns. This in turn will lead ultimately toward a global grand bargain in which the main emitters, including the US and China, agree to curb emissions. In exchange the rich nations will agree to the transfer of clean technology to the rising "flow" countries.
Japan is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this shift. While the world has been focused on the miracle of Chinese growth, the war in Iraq and terrorism, Japan has been engaging in a quiet revolution. It has become the incubator of the energy efficient technologies of the future.
Japan is the leading manufacturer and exporter of hybrid cars, most famously the Toyota Prius, which is selling like hotcakes in the United States. Honda has developed a hydrogen fuel cell car that is being prepared for mass production. Komatsu has just produced the world's first-ever hybrid heavy machinery, a 20-ton excavator used in construction sites all across Asia.
Japan is responsible for 50 per cent of the world's solar power energy production. Japan uses 20 per cent less energy to produce a ton of steel than the US; 50 per cent less than China.
Innovations abound from capturing "ice energy" to more energy efficient plasma screens. Indeed, the facility that will house the media at the Lake Toya summit will be cooled by snow stored in thermal insulation instead of by air conditioning.
As America has moved toward a largely financial economy, exemplified by the sub-prime mortgage crisis, Japan retains the very manufacturing and engineering prowess the world needs to face the daunting challenge of climate change.
This fits Japan's historical profile well. Going back centuries, it has had something of a green identity. As Umehara Takeshi, the great Japanese anthropologist, has noted, the Shinto religion, in which man is not considered apart from nature, emerged from ancient Japan's "civilization of the forest."
In the 17th century, as Jared Diamond points out in his seminal book, Collapse, the Tokugawa Shogunate reforested Japan, denuded by development, and saved it from the kind of ecological catastrophe that struck the Mayans. Though one of the most densely populated countries in the world, 70 per cent of Japan today is covered by healthy forests.
And, of course, the namesake of the very Protocol which is the first global effort to come to grips with climate change, is Japan's ancient capital, Kyoto.
Beneath the surface of Japan's faddish consumer society, the frugal culture of an island nation that must wisely husband limited resources still lives. Today, we recognize that the Earth itself is an island. Taking Japan's lead, the whole planet would be wise to adopt that frugal sensibility, living intelligently instead of wastefully.
I am sorry if I bore you folks with my claims to the astonishing ability of Institutional Analysis to accurately predict the future. But over 16 years ago, what is going to happen July 7 to 9, 2008 at the G-8 Summit at Lake Toya, Japan was already so obvious, I decided to put it on the cover of probably the only book I'll ever get published in USA.
So what were the Institutional assumptions about Japanese environmentalism that caused me to make such a claim on the cover?
- The Japanese are obsessed with the value of oil. It can be convincingly argued that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor to secure oil supplies. Not only do they thoroughly understand oil's value, they have no domestic suppliers (oil lobbyists) to cloud their national debates over economic policy.
- Japanese manufacturing dominance is due to two related cultural traits--attention to details and the notion that nothing is ever perfectly finished. They are far less interested in who was first to build something and far more interested who builds it best right now. (I remember reading some of the many books published in the 1980s on Toyota's statistical quality controls and concluding that either folks used their methods or produced inferior goods.)
- Unlike the Brits and Americans, the Japanese do not require that their intellectuals be technologically illiterate to the point of open hostility to the mechanisms for the community's survival. In the Anglo countries, environmentalists tend to suggest primitive solutions (in those rare cases when they actually offer solutions). By contrast, the Japanese understand that, for example, increases in per capita energy and other resource efficiencies will most likely come from perfected technologies and manufacturing methods.
Combine these factors and it is logical to assume that when greener technologies are made, the Japanese are more likely than anyone to produce them. It is important to remember here that technology is evolutionary. The better you are right now, the better you can be tomorrow. It is not enough to want to be "greener." Skills are necessary. Even more important, methods must be in place so that existing skills can get better.
Of all the crimes of Finance Capitalism, none has been more serious than the destruction of industrial potential. Here in USA, we have not only failed to build an environmentally sustainable infrastructure, we have spent the last 35 years destroying the manufacturing base necessary to meaningfully embark on such a project.
*Actual quote from the top blurb on the cover "Why industrial redesign has become the preferred environmental strategy in Japan and Northern Europe and the lessons for all who would follow"
