As the leaders of the world’s leading rich nations meet in Hiroshima with the twin crises of energy security and climate change looming large, they won’t need to look far for an example of how a warming planet’s effects are already wreaking havoc on even the wealthiest economies.
Hiroshima Prefecture, the capital of which will host the Group of Seven leaders from May 19 to 21, was one of the hardest-hit areas of Japan when torrential rain engulfed a large swath of the country in the summer of 2018, causing flooding, landslides, debris flow and erosion that left over 230 dead and cost ¥1.16 trillion (about $10 billion at the time), or roughly 2.6% of the country’s nominal gross domestic product in 2018.
The rain disaster was immediately followed by a calamity of another sort: a deadly heat wave, with temperatures in Celsius soaring into the upper 30s in many parts of the country and even into the low 40s in some areas.