The Asahi Shinbun newspaper evening edition has a column named “Mado (windw)” written by editorial committee members.
Mr. Murayama, an editorial member, who listened to my lecture of December wrote a piece of the column by the title of “Out from ‘Reasons for why something cannot be done’”. I am delighted. I also received many e-mails saying “I'm all for it!” or “You are right!” Thanks to each one of them.
The column goes as below.
■Japan will be an exporting country of food and clean energy by 2050.
■Dr. Kiyoshi Kurokawa, Professor of National Graduate Institute of Policy Studies (GRIPS) advised a year ago to the then Prime Minister Abe of setting up such objectives. This was during the time when Dr. Kurokawa was the Science Advisor to the Cabinet.
■Responses from the related government offices to the Prime Minister’s office were solely negative - chorus of “No way!”
■Japanese food self-sufficiency is only 40%. When it comes to energy, the rate even lowers to 4%. It doesn’t take an government official at Kasumigaseki to see that achieving this goal is an extremely difficult task.
■“But listing up reasons why something can’t be done is no good”, says Dr. Kurokawa in a strong tone. Set a goal that has a strong impact, and communicate it in easy words to the public so that everybody can pose a question “what can I do?” to themselves. Bringing about changes to the society through these kinds of actions is what politics is all about, according to Kurokawa.
■President elect Barack Obama is sending out a clear message of overcoming the recession through Green New Deal Policy. Other countries responded to this and started to ask themselves the question of “What can we do to realize the low carbon society?”
■Japan today has no political leadership. So the “Reasons why something cannot be done” has strong impacts and influences.
■These days, Dr. Kurokawa is preaching at variety of places and occasions -“We can achieve the goal of exporting food and clean energy even by 2030”
<Tomohiro Murayama>
(Source: The Asahi Newspaper evening edition of Monday, January 19th page2)
Thank you, Mr. Murayama.
Now, what do you think about it?
