The Monday Read

Heat Edition

Here we are, breaking heat records again. I am a fairly optimistic person, but climate change worries me.

I have felt Sendai’s climate change in the 22 years I have been here. Everything I read or learn indicates that things are going to continue getting worse going forward, unless we hit a tipping point.

If that happens things will change much more quickly.

And yet nothing is actually being done. I don’t get it. I don’t know of a single major government that is taking this seriously. Most of them seem to be actively trying to make things worse.

I was talking to a 60-year old man at a wedding yesterday. He told me when he started working, Sendai was pretty cool in the summer, and his staff dormitory in Tokyo neither had nor needed AC.

What’s it going to be like here in 40 years’ time?

YouTube

Thank you for your support of the RetireJapan YouTube channel 🙂

I completely failed to make a video last week. In my defence, I was really busy at work, but on the other hand ‘busy doth butter no parsnips‘. I will try to do better going forward 🙂

The Forum

The Forum is doing well (21,856 posts so far). Here are the latest active threads:

This week’s books

I’m still reading New York 2140, by Kim Stanley Robinson. This may have prompted the rant at the beginning of this post 😉

Also picked up this beaty! Planning to read it this week -I’ll let you know if it is any good…

  1. This is my experience. First, commit to the thing. Then, figure out how to do it: What if You Have it Backwards?
  2. The conclusion from konichi-value: My Final Thoughts on Investing in Japanese Real Estate
  3. Enjoyed this discussion (YouTube): From English teacher to Software Dev in Japan – Answering all of your questions!
  4. Best way is to get Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery: How I Mastered the Art of Ventilating My Home
  5. Seems like quite a few times in recent years… Once in a Lifetime
  6. Really enjoyed this conversation with Stanley Druckenmiller (YouTube)
  7. Trung Phan strikes again: McDonald’s $42B real estate empire, explained
  8. I liked HCMC better than Hanoi: Walking the World: Hanoi (part 1)
  9. I am looking for my cabin now: On Wendell Berry’s Move from NYU to a Riverside Cabin
  10. I need to wrest leisure from my wife… (long) Ten years of leisure wrested from The Man

What do you think? Anything interesting in there?

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6 Responses

  1. I’ve been dying to use ‘doth nutter no parsnips’ since I first saw this clip ages ago. You beat me to it.

  2. I agree entirely; climate change is the single most critical issue of our time, representing a catastrophic failure of our political, economic, and social systems. We seem to have made a collective decision that it is better to continue on our current trajectory rather than make the difficult changes that are necessary, thus condemning millions to suffering, and in some cases, death.

  3. Yep Climate change is a real worry , and more so for my kid.. Keeping it finance related I guess the best I can do is try and save/invest wisely so that my kid will have options, such as moving country to re-locate. I bought a house here a few years ago and now worry if that place will be livable in a 20 years or so… summers are getting to be un-bearable…

  4. Multiple governments and (shock) corporations have committed to carbon neutrality targets and to funding new technologies to help solve these problems.
    We are also, slowly but surely, moving away from the internal combustion engine, one of the largest sources of carbon emissions. So… maybe I’m being naive, and perhaps this is all nothing but talk or just a PR ploy, but to say “nobody takes this seriously” seems a bit over the top.
    There is so much impatience, but these issues are complex and won’t be solved tomorrow, no matter the policy. It will take decades or more, and it will likely get worse before it gets better. Meanwhile politicians still need to balance the realities of governing in a world where people want cheap power to cool/warm their homes, and a few percentage points in energy cost increases threatens personal budgets and has people calling for action.

    1. Well, it’s very easy for a politician or CEO to set a target to be carbon neutral (whatever that ends up meaning) in 2050, after they are dead.

      What we need governments and corporations to do is to take action this year.

      Phasing out fossil fuel subsidies would be nice, but many countries are instead increasing them. Banning new exploration/drilling/extraction. Mandating green building codes, or renewable energy. Nope.

      So I stand by the ‘not doing anything’ claim. I don’t see any major government going to a war footing against climate change, which is what we need to do in the next few years.

      Once Greenland/Antarctica melt, or the methane in the permafrost is released, or the ocean/wind currents shift it will be too late, however much we want to take action then.

      But we knew this in the 1970s. I don’t understand how politicians can read this and choose not to act (or maybe they just aren’t reading it): https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/reports