Editorial: Amid global warming threat, Japan's financial sector must help protect planet
Major financial institutions in Japan and the U.S. have successively withdrawn from the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), an international framework aiming for decarbonization. Following the departure of U.S. banks including Citigroup Inc., Japan's three megabanks, including Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc., followed suit this spring.
The NZBA is a system that encourages financial institutions to select their investment and lending targets based on whether they are contributing to decarbonization, thereby promoting the exit of businesses with a large environmental impact, such as coal-fired power generation. It is expected that the initiative will prove effective in pushing for the realization of a carbon-free society with the power of finance to influence corporate activities.
The tide has changed, however, with the return of Trump, who has dismissed the climate crisis as "fake." Criticism within the ruling Republican Party has grown over financial institutions aligning themselves to restrict investments and loans for fossil fuel businesses. In some U.S. states, there have been moves to exclude NZBA member banks from transactions, on the grounds their stance contradicts the Trump administration's energy policy.
U.S. banks that have left the NZBA are already actively investing and lending for fossil fuel projects. The Japanese megabanks have not provided reasons for their departure, but it is believed that they became wary of the risk of their business in the U.S. being disadvantaged under the scrutiny of the Trump administration. The banks stress that they will strengthen climate change measures, but by following the lead of American banks, they cannot evade being labeled deceptive.
The NZBA was launched in 2021 at the proposal of Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England and current Prime Minister of Canada. Leading financial institutions worldwide signed up, pledging to collaborate on decarbonization, aiming for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
European banks that place an emphasis on climate change measures and many in emerging and developing countries have not withdrawn. Within Japan, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Group Inc. remains a member of the alliance.
The target of keeping the average global rise in temperatures to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels as a measure against global warming is under threat. It is essential to make efforts to keep international cooperation on decarbonization from backpedaling.
Megabanks operating globally bear a responsibility to act with the planet's interests in mind.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Japan Times
17 minutes ago
- Japan Times
Europe is breaking its reliance on American science
European governments are taking steps to break their dependence on critical scientific data the United States historically made freely available to the world, and are ramping up their own data collection systems to monitor climate change and weather extremes. The effort marks the most concrete response from the European Union and other European governments so far to the U.S. government's retreat from scientific research under the administration of President Donald Trump. Since his return to the White House, Trump has initiated sweeping budget cuts to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and other agencies, dismantling programs conducting climate, weather, geospatial and health research, and taking some public databases offline. As those cuts take effect, European officials have expressed increasing alarm that — without continued access to U.S.-supported weather and climate data — governments and businesses will face challenges in planning for extreme weather events and long-term infrastructure investment. In March, more than a dozen European countries urged the European Commission to move fast to recruit American scientists who lose their jobs to those cuts. Asked for comment on NOAA cuts and the EU's moves to expand its own collection of scientific data, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said Trump's proposed cuts to the agency's 2026 budget were aimed at programs that spread "fake Green New Scam 'science,'" a reference to climate change research and policy. "Under President Trump's leadership, the U.S. is funding real science again,' Rachel Cauley, an OMB spokesperson, said via email. European officials said that — beyond the risk of losing access to data that is bedrock to the world's understanding of climate change and marine systems — they were concerned by the general U.S. pullback from research. "The current situation is much worse than we could have expected," said Sweden's State Secretary for Education and Research Maria Nilsson. "My reaction is, quite frankly, shock." The Danish Meteorological Institute described the U.S. government data as "absolutely vital" — and said it relied on several data sets to measure including sea ice in the Arctic and sea surface temperatures. "This isn't just a technical issue, reliable data underpins extreme weather warnings, climate projections, protecting communities and ultimately saves lives," said Adrian Lema, director of the DMI's National Center for Climate Research. Officials from eight European countries, who said their governments were undertaking reviews of their reliance on U.S. marine, climate and weather data, were interviewed. Officials from seven countries — Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden — described joint efforts now in the early stages to safeguard key health and climate data and research programs. Leaning on the U.S. As a priority, the EU is expanding its access to ocean observation data, a senior European Commission official said. Those data sets are seen as critical to the shipping and energy industries as well as early storm warning systems. Over the next two years, the senior official said, the EU plans to expand its own European Marine Observation and Data Network which collects and hosts data on shipping routes, seabed habitats, marine litter and other concerns. The initiative was aimed at "mirroring and possibly replacing U.S.-based services," the senior European Commission official said. Europe is particularly concerned about its vulnerability to U.S. funding cuts to NOAA's research arm that would affect the Global Ocean Observing System, a network of ocean observation programs that supports navigation services, shipping routes and storm forecasting, a second EU official said. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Hurricane Center in Miami earlier this year. About 800 of NOAA's 12,000-strong workers have been terminated or taken financial incentives to resign as part of Trump's Department of Government Efficiency cuts. | Reuters The insurance industry relies on the Global Ocean Observing System's disaster records for risk modelling. Coastal planners use shoreline, sea-level, and hazard data to guide infrastructure investments. The energy industry uses oceanic and seismic datasets to assess offshore drilling or wind farm viability. In addition, the senior EU Commission official said, the EU is considering increasing its funding of the Argo program, a part of the Global Ocean Observing System which operates a global system of floats to monitor the world's oceans and track global warming, extreme weather events and sea-level rise. NOAA last year described the program, in operation for over 25 years, as the "crown jewel" of ocean science. It makes its data freely available to the oil and gas industry, marine tourism and other industries. The United States funds 57% of Argo's $40 million annual operating expenses, while the EU funds 23%. The White House and NOAA did not respond to questions about future support for that program. The European moves to establish independent data collection and play a bigger role in Argo represent a historic break with decades of U.S. leadership in ocean science, said Craig McLean, who retired in 2022 after four decades at the agency. He said U.S. leadership of weather, climate and marine data collection was unmatched, and that through NOAA, the U.S. has paid for more than half of the world's ocean measurements. European scientists acknowledge the outsize role the U.S. government has played in global scientific research and data collection — and that European countries have grown overly dependent on that work. "It's a bit like defense: we rely heavily on the U.S. in that area, too. They're trailblazers and role models — but that also makes us dependent on them," said Katrin Boehning-Gaese, scientific director of Germany's Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research. 'Guerilla Archivists' A number of European governments are now taking measures to reduce that dependence. Nordic countries met to coordinate data storage efforts in the spring, said Norwegian Minister of Research and Higher Education Sigrun Aasland. European science ministers also discussed the U.S. science budget cuts at a meeting in Paris in May. Aasland said Norway was setting aside $2 million to back up and store U.S. data to ensure stable access. The Danish Meteorological Institute in February started downloading historical U.S. climate data in case it is deleted by the U.S. It is also preparing to switch from American observations to alternatives, Christina Egelund, minister of higher education and science of Denmark, said in an interview. "The potentially critical issue is when new observations data stop coming in," the Institute's Lema said. While weather models could continue to operate without U.S. data, he said the quality would suffer. Meanwhile, the German government has commissioned scientific organizations, including the center, to review its reliance on U.S. databases. Since Trump returned to the White House, scientists and citizens worldwide have been downloading U.S. databases related to climate, public health or the environment that are slated for decommissioning — calling it "guerrilla archiving." "We actually received requests — or let's say emergency calls — from our colleagues in the U.S., who said, 'We have a problem here... and we will have to abandon some datasets,' said Frank Oliver Gloeckner, head of the digital archive Pangaea, which is operated by publicly funded German research institutions. About 800 of NOAA's 12,000-strong workers have been terminated or taken financial incentives to resign as part of Trump's Department of Government Efficiency cuts. The White House 2026 budget plan seeks to shrink NOAA even further, proposing a $1.8 billion cut, or 27% of the agency's budget, and a near-20% reduction in staffing, bringing down the NOAA workforce to 10,000. The budget proposal would eliminate the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, NOAA's main research arm, which is responsible for ocean observatory systems including Argo, coastal observing networks, satellite sensors and climate model labs. It is also reducing its data products. Between April and June, NOAA announced on its website the decommissioning of 20 datasets or products related to earthquakes and marine science. NOAA did not respond to requests for comment. Gloeckner said there were no legal hurdles to storing the U.S. government data as it was already in the public domain. But without significant funds and infrastructure, there are limits to what private scientists can save, said Denice Ross, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, a nonprofit science policy group and the U.S. government's chief data officer during the administration of President Joe Biden. Databases need regular updating — which requires the funding and infrastructure that only governments can provide, Ross said. Over the last few months, the federation and EU officials have held a series of talks with European researchers, U.S. philanthropies and health and environment advocacy groups to discuss how to prioritize what data to save. "There is an opportunity for other nations and institutions and philanthropies to fill in the gaps if U.S. quality starts to falter," she said.
NHK
an hour ago
- NHK
Trump fires US labor official over major job market data revision
US President Donald Trump announced on social media on Friday that he had given an order to fire a Labor Department official over major downward revisions of job market data. Trump's decision to fire the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner is in response to the figures released Friday. They include massive downward corrections of earlier data for the increase in workers in non-farm sectors. He called it "a major mistake." The bureau corrected the number of jobs created in May from 144,000 to 19,000, and that in June from 147,000 to 14,000. The net downward revision totaled 258,000. The department said the scale of the correction is larger than usual. Trump wrote in a separate social media post, "In my opinion, today's Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad." He added that job numbers were massively revised downward also right after the presidential election in 2024. He called the revisions "A TOTAL SCAM," without giving evidence of manipulation. Trump said the bureau chief will be replaced with "someone much more competent and qualified." The job market statistics is one of the key economic indexes in the US to determine the state of the labor market and business conditions. The Federal Reserve places importance on it to decide its monetary policies.
Japan Times
an hour ago
- Japan Times
Ghislaine Maxwell moved to lower-security facility; Trump says no plea for pardon
Ghislaine Maxwell has been transferred from a Florida prison to a lower-security facility in Texas to continue serving her 20-year sentence for helping the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse underage girls, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons said on Friday. Maxwell's move from FCI Tallahassee, a low-security prison, to the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, comes a week after she met with Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, who said he wanted to speak with her about anyone else who may have been involved in Epstein's crimes. Maxwell's lawyer, David Markus, confirmed she was moved but said he had no other comment. Spokespeople for the U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Asked during a White House interview with Newsmax on Friday about the possibility of pardoning Maxwell, U.S. President Donald Trump said, "I'm allowed to do it, but nobody's asked me to do it." He added, "I know nothing about the case." Asked about what was discussed between Maxwell and the deputy attorney general last week, Trump said he believed Blanche "just wants to make sure that innocent people aren't hurt" should documents in the Epstein probe be released. The BOP classifies prison camps such as Bryan as minimum-security institutions, the lowest of five security levels in the federal system. Such facilities have limited or no perimeter fencing. Low-security facilities such as FCI Tallahassee have double-fenced perimeters and higher staff-to-inmate ratios than prison camps, according to the bureau. Asked why Maxwell was transferred, BOP spokesperson Donald Murphy said he could not comment on the specifics of any incarcerated individual's prison assignment, but that the BOP determines where inmates are sent based on such factors as "the level of security and supervision the inmate requires." Blanche's meeting with Maxwell came as Trump faces pressure from both his base of conservative supporters and congressional Democrats to release more information from the Justice Department's investigations of Maxwell and Epstein. The department is seeking court approval to release transcripts of law enforcement officers' testimony before the grand juries that indicted Maxwell and Epstein. Such transcripts are usually kept secret. Two federal judges in Manhattan are weighing the government's requests. Lawyers for Maxwell, Epstein, and their alleged victims are due to share their positions on the potential unsealing with the judges in filings on Tuesday. Epstein died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. He had pleaded not guilty. Neither Markus nor Blanche has provided detailed accounts of what they discussed. Markus has said Maxwell would welcome relief from Trump. Maxwell was found guilty at a 2021 trial of recruiting and grooming girls for Epstein to abuse. She had pleaded not guilty and is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn her conviction.
