Sapporo, the capital of Japan's northernmost Hokkaido prefecture, hosted a meeting of ministers of the Group of Seven countries on climate, energy and the environment. A joint communiqué adopted at the end of the two-day conference included the group's commitment to "accelerate the phase-out" of all fossil fuels, including natural gas, and for the first time to extend the scope of the phrase to non-coal fuels. Yet the declaration as a whole fell short of a commitment to step up decarbonisation efforts, and industrialized countries failed to show how they would survive the ever-escalating climate crisis. While the United States and European countries have pushed for strengthened countermeasures, Japan, this year's G7 president, has been reluctant to do so, prioritizing domestic industry and other parties. This attitude influenced the final communique. For example, the joint statement did not specify a target year for phasing out coal-fired power generation. As Japan plans to continue using coal power until fiscal 2030, it has resisted the move to specify any specific time frame. Although Japan has supported measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through co-combustion of ammonia, the effectiveness of this initiative has been questioned. The communiqué also abandoned numerical targets for increasing the market share of zero-emission electric vehicles. Japan's intentions to protect domestic technologies for hybrid and other vehicles where Japanese automakers have an advantage are apparently behind this. According to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve the global goal of limiting the increase in the average global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. We must not waste time in solving this problem.