Policy-making is the art of harmonizing ideals and reality, and nothing seems to fit this better than setting environmental targets.
The latest example are the government moves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 4 percent by 2020 from 2005, a fall officials say is the maximum level a developing country like Korea can strive for. President Lee Myung-bak also said ― rightly ― it's better to set a goal at ``a little bit ideal level'' and seek to meet it.
Yet few outside of the government appear to agree with Lee. Industrial lobbies say the government does not understand the reality, in which it would be difficult for the manufacturing-heavy Korean economy to even freeze the emission level at the 2005 level in 11 years time.
At the other extreme, environmentalists criticize Seoul's plan as too timid, stressing the carbon-cut objective should be at least 25 percent, as are the cases of Japan and some European countries.
The domestic industrialists' complaints are not entirely unjustifiable, as Korea is classified as a ``non-Appendix I'' country that has no obligation to voluntarily curtail carbon emissions. If the plan is put into action, this would result in a lot of pain and inconvenience for corporations and individuals. But the business associations are wrong to say ― or threaten ― that the measure would drive out more companies to less developed and less environmentally regulated countries in Southeast Asia, adversely affecting the nation's economic growth and employment situations.
That Korea has to actively cut down on greenhouse gas emissions is not just because it will host the G20 summit next year or because President Lee pledged Seoul would be an ``early mover'' at this year's meeting, but because this country is the ninth-biggest emitter of CO2 and other globe-warming gases, and more importantly, the temperature on the Korean Peninsula has gone up twice as fast as the rest of the world over the past decade or so.
The business community's complaint that the Japanese government is leaving the matter to the private sector only reveals the wide gap in environmental consciousness of firms between the two countries. The time has long past for Korean businesses to practice the much-wrought adage of having to turn a crisis into opportunities, and tackle this issue with a more positive stance and longer-term perspectives.
That said, what's more worrisome than the government's target itself is whether the measures it announced would be practicable enough to produce desired results.
Its plans to slap heavy congestion fees on vehicles entering into the crowded city centers during rush hours or encourage ``car-sharing'' among commuters, while laudable in intention, have been attempted before but shelved in the face of strong resistance from the people. Equally dubious is the measure to reflect energy efficiency on housing prices, as the home value here has been swayed by factors unrelated with the properties, such as school zones and re-development programs.
A far stronger and more sophisticated combination of penalties and incentives will be needed to make corporations and individuals turn more environment-conscious and better comply with the government policy. A better and more effective way of reaffirming the seriousness of the government, both here and abroad, is to put it into a special law that will have to include, among other things, specific emission targets and industrial tools, such as a cap-and-trade system.
Abroad, Seoul's green growth strategy has so far been sneered at as ``greenwash,'' meaning this country has actually focused its investment on conventional smokestack industries. In this regard, the Lee administration's latest move smacks of a pre-emptive step prior to next month's Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
Scientists share the view, however, that the more passive a country is in preventing climate change, the greater the damage it will have to suffer.