Sunday, August 21, 2005
Water attackJapan seems to have taken upon itself to show the world how to live by the Kyoto Protocol and combat global warming. In April, the prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi launched a fashion trend he called "Cool Biz" to encourage government employees and businessmen to forego the customary tie, long-sleeve shirt and jacket during the summer. That would allow building temperatures to be raised to 82F without sacrificing comfort, thereby saving billions of barrels of oil in energy used for office air conditioning and megaquintillions yen (or quadrazillions dollars if you are counting, and with the skyhigh cost of oil, you'd better count).
Now environmental activists have started a new campaign, Operation Water Scattering, to ask city residents to drench concrete in urban areas in order to cool down big cities and again fight global warming. In Japan, it's not unusual to see owners of shops and households toss buckets of water in front of their places -- that's one of the main dangers of walking in small-town Japan, getting hit by water while you are dodging kamikaze elderly women on bicycles. But now citizens are requested to also scatter water on grounds near public facilities such as government offices and schools.
Now there is something my enquiring mind wants to know: When taxi drivers do their time-honored tradition of public urination, does that help or hurt global warming? I mean theoretically it could raise sidewalk temperature a wee bit. Research is a lot of hard work.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 6:36 AM
Comments:
<< Home
Kamikaze women on bicycles? Not politically correct but so true. I got run over by one of them in Sendai. Knocked me over. The little old lady got up, bowed deeply, and kept going.
# posted by 
: 21 August, 2005 08:08
: 21 August, 2005 08:08
I remember seeing similar things in the 1970's, when a member of the Japanese leadership showed up wearing a powder-blue short-sleeve leisure suit. Yup. That was the 1970's. A wee bit of history.
Post a Comment
<< Home
