Protests continued Thursday against Japan’s call for abandoning the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. Japan says it will not agree to extend emissions cuts under Kyoto unless the United States and China also sign on. Masako Konishi of the World Wildlife Fund urged Japan to preserve Kyoto.

Masako Konishi: “Japan said at the beginning of the conference that Japan is not going to commit itself to after post-2012 the Kyoto Protocol. So Japan is moving away from the Kyoto Protocol. And if Japan does that, then it upsets a lot of developing countries and really block the negotiation here at Cancún. So Japan needs to say, at the Kyoto Protocol, so that it can show leadership, that it’s really, really serious about tackling the global climate change.”

In another protest, North American indigenous activists led a protest against Canada’s mining of oil in tar sands, the world’s biggest single industrial source of carbon emissions.

Melina Mewapun Laboucan-Massimo: “The tar sands are the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada, and it’s one of the biggest emitters of toxic contaminants in our traditional territories.”