In short, even though President Obama pledged to the world at Copenhagen that the United States is committed to action on global warming, the domestic politics are only growing “curiouser and curiouser,” as Alice might say from Wonderland. An analysis of the latest federal records by The Center for Public Integrity shows that the overall number of businesses and groups lobbying on climate legislation has essentially held steady at about 1,160, thanks in part to a variety of interests that have left the fray. But a close look at the 140 or so interests that jumped into the debate for the first time in the third quarter shows a marked trend: Companies and organizations which feel they’ve been overlooked are fighting for a place at the table.

In other words, as the action moved to the Senate in recent months, still more sectors of the economy waded into the battle. This occurred even though the issue and interests are already so complex that Congress failed to pass legislation this year as hoped, and even though the House more than doubled its draft bill to 1,428 pages to address an array of industry concerns and gain passage back in June. The amount of money involved likely rose as well. Although amounts spent on lobbying by issue are not disclosed, if the groups involved spent just 10 percent of their lobbying budgets on climate, they shelled out $30.5 million in the third quarter — up nearly 13 percent over the previous quarter.

Then came the country’s historic August election which ended the business-friendly LDP’s nearly unbroken hold on 50 years of Japanese politics. In power now is the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), a coalition of disaffected LDP veterans, independents, and longtime opposition members. The DPJ vowed to wrest control of policymaking from the bureaucracy and interest groups, and set about trying to change the very decision-making process that the business establishment has relied upon to get its views across.

On climate change, the DPJ’s break with the past is striking. The new ruling party has called for an ambitious 25 percent cut of greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2020, with a premise that all major economies would join in with similar goals. The target was far more aggressive than the eight percent cut proposed by the previous administration and it quickly upended earlier efforts by Miyamoto’s association to promote its position to the government.