園田義明めも。

有料会員向け記事だから読めない．．．

言うに事欠いて、Harakiri　とは。　しかし、この比喩は効いていますね。　私は、Harakiri　ではなくて　Hatokiri 　がしたいです。

有料会員向け記事だから読めませんが、出だしの記事の書き方からいって、ＷＳＪは鳩山政権を皮肉っているんですか？

きたろうさんへ

英文は下記に全文貼り付けておきますね。
日本人による日本的な解説を見つけたので、そちらは表の方に追加しておきます。

とら猫イーチさんへ

＞私は、Harakiri　ではなくて　Hatokiri 　

うまい！　もうそろそろ退場だとは思いますけど。

Japan's Carbon Hara-Kiri
A self-inflicted blow to Japanese industry, largely for political gain.
By JOSEPH STERNBERG
Tokyo
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304561304575153193859046862.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

Japan should pass the carbon-emissions-regulating climate-change bill the Diet currently is considering. The great virtue of the move to reduce the country's carbon emissions come 2020 by 25% from 1990 levels is that it will be ruinously expensive, and hopefully bankrupt a lot of companies. Thus will the world's second-largest economy finally clean out the excessive supply capacity it built up in the 1980s and never quite unwound after the bubble burst.

April Fools, Dear Reader. Cap-and-trade or more carbon taxation isn't a good idea for Japan, by any measure. But Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama proposes to play a far crueler joke on the economy by pushing forward with the legislation this spring anyway, because that bit about the ruinous expense is all too true.

Mr. Hatoyama's cabinet approved on March 12 a law establishing a framework for carbon-emissions cuts, and the full Diet could vote on it within the next few months. The mid-term target—that 25% cut by 2020—is conditional on other countries adopting their own emissions reductions. But the long-term target of a draconian 50% cut in emissions by 2050 would not be conditional on anything. As to how these cuts would be enforced, expectations run toward a combination of domestic cap-and-trade, carbon taxes and subsidies for renewable energy.

Here's why companies aren't laughing: Japanese industry already is highly efficient. Partly that's because Japan Inc., which imports almost all its oil, was chastened by its experience during the 1970s-era oil crises, and partly due to earlier rounds of costly government regulations. As of 2006, to produce one kilowatt hour of electricity France used 2% more energy than Japan; the United States, 13%; China, 32%; and India, 41%. The same is true of cement clinker (the stuff that's ground down to cement), and many other products, ranging from industrial chemicals to paper (though with paper Germany is 15% more efficient than Japan).

The flip side of this situation is that Japan has few ways to eke more energy efficiency out of the economy. If all Japanese steelmakers adopted all the most energy-efficient methods currently available for commercial use, the industry would cut its emissions by only 0.07 tons of carbon dioxide per ton of steel. Adopting those same technologies across China's entire steel industry, by contrast, would cut its emissions by 0.48 tons of carbon dioxide per ton of steel, and the U.S. and European Union would each cut emissions by around 0.15 tons.

So Japanese companies would have to spend big wads of yen to comply with Mr. Hatoyama's carbon dream. The Nippon Keidanren, an umbrella business lobby group, estimated in response to an earlier, roughly equivalent, cap-and-trade plan that reducing CO2 emissions by one ton would cost about $476. That compares to $60 in the U.S. and between $48 and $135 in the European Union. The difference arises partly because as a scientific matter any further marginal reduction from Japan's already "low" emissions will require a huge technological investment. Meanwhile, Japan is contemplating steeper emissions cuts than any other country—that $476 figure assumes a cut of 25% below 1990 levels, compared to 20-30% in the EU and 3% in the U.S. (these figures are relative to 1990 levels).

Note, incidentally, that this is a conservative estimate assuming that other major economies also implement emissions cuts. Otherwise, Japan would face a competitiveness problem that might impose its own costs in terms of business lost to cheaper countries.

A serious economic implication lies beneath these data: Since Japan's manufacturers already tend to avail themselves of the most advanced technologies for using energy efficiently, only two options remain to further cut carbon output. Option A is to conjure up a bevy of technological miracles that will rapidly increase energy efficiency to new levels. Option B is to shut down a certain proportion of today's emitters. Neither would be cheap, although an environment ministry task force last week improbably claimed investment spurred by pursuing Option A would boost the economy come 2020. Only Option B could be counted on to reduce emissions fast enough to hit the 2020 mid-term deadline.

In light of all this it's passing strange that Mr. Hatoyama is pressing ahead with this bill. Blame politics. After watching their prime minister thrash around helplessly for his first six months in office, voters are growing impatient for some sign of competence ahead of the summer's upper house elections in parliament. Climate-change legislation may be the only election promise, albeit a brash one, Mr. Hatoyama thinks he can deliver on. It doesn't help that for reasons unclear the climategate email scandals and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change glacier goofs haven't received as much play in Japan as they have elsewhere, so skepticism of the green cause hasn't grown much yet.

So we finally arrive at Mr. Hatoyama's punch line. Japan is the developed economy that "needs" carbon emissions regulation the least—even if you buy the increasingly questionable assertion that carbon emissions are a clear and present danger. Yet it is the only developed economy that is seriously considering further emissions regulation. That's not a desirable place to be if you're already facing deflationary fears, a tenuous export-led recovery and an inexorably aging population. Time to start praying for that technological miracle.

Mr. Sternberg edits the Business Asia column.