A battle is brewing between the city and its booksellers, who have been warned that the kiosks will have to be taken down for the Paris Olympics – an unprecedented move since the book stalls took up full-time residence along the Seine more than 160 years ago.
Japan’s population declined in all of its 47 prefectures for the first time in a record drop, while its number of foreign residents hit a new high, reaching almost 3 million people, according to government data released Wednesday, highlighting the increasing role that non-Japanese people play in the shrinking and aging country.
The population of Japanese nationals fell by about 800,000 people, or 0.65%, to 122.4 million in 2022 from the previous year, falling for a 14th straight year.
One of the more threatening aspects of climate change is its potential to unleash feedbacks, or situations where warming induces changes that drive even more warming. Most of those are natural, such as a warmer ocean being able to hold less carbon dioxide, resulting in even more of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
But at least one potential feedback has a very human element: air conditioning.
A lot of the carbon dioxide we emit comes from the production of electricity. The heat those emissions generate causes people to run air conditioning more often, which drives more electricity use, which drives further emissions. It’s a feedback that will remain a threat until we manage to green the electrical grid.
Japan’s proportion of elderly people is the highest in the world.