Japan Cracks Down On Wasteful Energy Consumption
Japan's Environment Ministry has ordered workers to leave and lights to go off at its headquarters by 8:00 pm in a fresh campaign to cut greenhouse gases, officials said.
"As a matter of fact, we cannot expect much from the lights-out project in itself,
"We sometimes have to launch this kind of dare. Otherwise we cannot achieve tough goals."
Japan, host of the landmark Kyoto Protocol, has launched a series of campaigns to fight global warming, such as encouraging people to wear cool clothes in the summer and bundle up in the winter to save on electricity.
But Japan is behind in its efforts to meet the Kyoto treaty, which requires the world's second largest economy to cut greenhouse gas emissions six percent by 2012 from the 1990 level.
I don't know if it's still true, but it used to be that just the vending machines in Japan used more electricy that the entire continent of Africa.
