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Japan’s New Climate Bomb—in the US

Bloomberg Green reveals the climate costs of the US-Japan trade deal.

Four years ago, The Guardian published a landmark expose in climate journalism that detailed a coming “carbon bomb” of oil and gas projects. Damian Carrington and Matthew Taylor reported that the projects included plans to explore for, drill, frack, refine, and transport enough additional oil and gas to equal 10 years of China’s planet-warming emissions. Quoting the Sixth Assessment Report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s hundreds of scientists, Carrington and Taylor added that if all 195 of the “carbon bombs” they identified became operational, there would be no chance of securing “a livable and sustainable future for all” by limiting temperature rise to the 1.5º C target of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Now, fresh reporting from Bloomberg Green has revealed a new proposed climate bomb—this one financed by Japan but built in the US.

On February 20, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and US President Donald Trump announced a new aspect of the trade agreement they reached last October. Their announcement was major news in Japan but got little coverage in the United States, crowded out by revelations from the Epstein files and the Supreme Court ruling that Trump’s tariffs are unconstitutional. The few stories that did run mostly summarized the two governments’ official statements, leading with the news........

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