Japanese voters want tough climate goals: survey

BONN, Germany (Reuters) - Japanese voters favor the deepest cuts in greenhouse gases under consideration by Prime Minister Taro Aso as part of a new U.N. climate pact, according to opinion poll results on Tuesday.

The survey indicated that 63 percent of Japanese of voting age favored a cut in greenhouse gas emissions of at least 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 in a U.N. pact due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December, it said.

Aso is due to decide in mid-June among six policy options, ranging from a rise of four percent over 1990 levels, a goal favored by Japanese industry, to a cut of 25 percent.

"The world is watching Japan," Masako Konishi of the WWF environmental group told a news conference on the sidelines of 181-nation climate talks in Bonn, Germany. "The public do want strong targets."

The survey also said that 61 percent of those asked reckoned that a strong 2020 goal would help the economy. The U.N.'s current Kyoto Protocol was named after the Japanese city where it was agreed in 1997.

WWF and other Japanese and international organizations -- which all favor tough climate goals -- commissioned the poll of 976 people by U.S.-based Greenberg Quinlan Rosner from May 16 to 25.

Separately, a survey by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research showed that promises so far by all developed nations worked out as an overall cut of between 8.2 and 14.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

Developing nations led by China and India want the rich to cut by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, the top end of a 25 to 40 percent range outlined by the U.N. climate panel as necessary to avoid the worst of global warming.