TOKYO: Kimiko Hirata has spent nearly half her life fighting to wean Japan off its dependence on coal, and now isn’t the time to slow down, the award-winning activist warns. "I’m hopeful, but we have no time to waste," said Hirata, the international director of Japan’s Kiko Network NGO. "Our future will be gone if we don’t act now," she told AFP.
It’s a message that Hirata, 50, has long worked to drive home in the world’s third-largest economy, which upped its reliance on coal after the 2011 Fukushima disaster took its nuclear plants offline.