Bluesky

At a time when some US news outlets have retreated from the climate story, hundreds of news organizations in Japan are headed in the opposite direction.

Inspired by Covering Climate Now’s “89% Project,” every television network and station in Japan this spring began a two-year program of airing public service commercials pointing out that 89 percent of people in Japan support climate action, “so people shouldn’t be afraid to talk about it.” And talking about climate change, the noted climate science communicator Katharine Hayhoe often says, is an essential first step towards doing something about it.

Now 136 of Japan’s news outlets have gone further, joining a public awareness project called “I am one of the 89% who want to stop global warming.” Organized by the UN Information Center in Japan, the project aims “to make visible the voices of prominent figures and people from all walks of life who want to stop global warming, and to amplify them into a collective voice of society.”

Many of the biggest names in Japan’s news media are taking part, including three CCNow partners: the newspapers Asahi Shimbun and Hokkaido Shimbun and the public broadcasting service NHK. Other participants include the newspapers Yomiuri Shimbun and Nikkei and commercial broadcasters Nippon TV and Fuji Television. Beginning on June 25, the outlets posted an 89 percent–themed message every day on their social-media accounts, websites, and other platforms. (The messaging, which includes original content creations like this post featuring an animated pink-and-white bear, will continue through the end of the year and be compiled here.)

The project is unfolding in a country that is a prominent, though often overlooked, part of the global climate challenge. Japan has long been one of the world’s biggest economies; it’s currently the fourth biggest, according to the International Monetary Fund, trailing only the United States, China, and Germany. It has also long been one of the biggest annual emitters of planet-warming gases; its 972 million tons of CO₂ emissions in 2024 placed it fifth in the world. At the same time, Japan is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts, notably extreme heat and intensified typhoons. The summer of 2025 was the hottest in Japan’s recorded history.

Yet the country’s conservative Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has shown little interest in defusing the climate emergency, much like her counterparts in the US and elsewhere. As Bloomberg Green revealed several months ago, the trade deal Takaichi signed with Donald Trump in October committed Japan to investing $33 billion in a gas-fired power plant in Ohio that, if completed, would rank as “one of the [US]’s largest sources of CO₂ emissions from electricity generation,” Bloomberg Green reported, roughly equivalent to “3.8 million gas cars over a year of driving.”

Would Takaichi have signed such an agreement if she knew that 89 percent of Japan’s people want their government to take stronger climate action? It’s impossible to know. What is known is that politicians in numerous countries mistakenly assume that their constituents don’t care very much about fighting climate change. In Germany, for example, a new study in Nature concluded from interviews with hundreds of elected officials across the partisan spectrum that they “vastly underestimated” the public’s support for climate action, especially the actions that can be most impactful, such as higher taxes and stricter laws.

This disconnect between what most of the public wants and what politicians think they want exists at a time when rapid, effective climate action is more urgently needed than ever. Not only is the planet getting hotter than it has been since civilization arose 10,000 years ago; it’s getting hotter faster than even scientists had anticipated. Global temperatures will keep rising until the burning of fossil fuels is phased out, which scientists say can be achieved with existing technologies. Journalists should be connecting all these dots. Bravo to our colleagues in Japan for advancing a model the rest of us can emulate.