A  town in India this month saw temperatures exceed 123 degrees Fahrenheit.  This event helps explain rather dramatically why, as the climate heats up and electricity is more available in developing  countries, the world is forecast to install 700 million air conditioners.  It is not just for comfort but at this heat level a health necessity.

In just 15 years, urban areas of China went from just a few percentage points of air conditioning penetration to over 100 percent — “i.e. more than one room air conditioner (AC) per urban household,” according to a recent report on the global AC boom by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. And air conditioner sales are now increasing in India, Indonesia and Brazil by between 10 and 15 percent per year.  India, a nation of 1.25 billion people, had just 5 percent air conditioning penetration in the year 2011.   It will be the world’s biggest growth market.

There is a close relationship between household income and air conditioner adoption, with ownership increasing 2.7 percentage points per $1,000 of annual household income. Mexico in particular, expects a stupendous growth of air conditioning over the 21st century, from 13 percent to as much as 81 percent of homes acquiring it.  With it will come a huge extra source of emissions.

Alarmed  at the implications, scientists are now trying to make conditioners more energy efficient, and less dependent on HFCs or hydrofluorocarbons as refrigerants that act as an extremely powerful greenhouse gas. The aim is to achieve a 25 to 30 percent improvement in efficiency, which is a feasible target and would make a big  difference to peak demand for electricity. Something called “mini-split air conditioners” are already available today in Korea, offering a 50 percent gain in  energy efficiency over traditional products.  Even 30 percent more efficient air conditioners, (and the phase out HFCs at the same time), could effectively offset the construction of as many as 1,550 peak power plants.

Cumulatively, by 2050,  given the greater efficiency, the world could avoid 98 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions. That figure represents 10 percent of the roughly 1,000 billion tons of CO2 that we could still emit from the year 2011 forward, according to scientists, and still have the possibility of keeping the planet’s warming below the target of 2 degrees Celsius. (Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis, New Scientist, May 31, 2016).

My own, un- scientific, observation is that people with air conditioning often seem to leave it on all day while they are out at work, hoping, no doubt, to return to a cool house. There ought to be an electronic system that turns the cooling off when you lock the front door as you leave, and on again when you return.  Some people are extraordinarily wasteful and unaware of their effect on the environment.  When I first went to America I noticed how carelessly power is used – because it is cheap.  Not so in Britain, where electricity bills are a political issue.   There, air conditioners are rare, but for how long as summers get warmer?

The UAE,one of the ten driest nations on Earth, with the help of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, is studying whether to build a mountain to increase rainfall. The mountain is designed to  trigger cloud formation and much-needed rainfall. Rising water demand in the country, combined with the effects of climate change, takes a toll on a total annual rainfall that averages just 75 millimetres. Hence the heavy use of expensive, energy-hungry desalination plants.

Generating clouds by blocking air flow with a mountain won’t make water appear magically out of nowhere, but will alter where moisture collects and falls. Rainfall patterns will shift. Somebody else may lose out.  This could affect other countries on the Arabian peninsula, the Middle East in general. Rainfall changes in already precarious environments wouldn’t go unnoticed, and may spark conflict in an unstable area.

Even if the UAE builds a mountain, the larger climate problem remains. What’s more, oil-rich nations in the region face a double-whammy: temperatures reaching levels beyond those human civilisation can handle, alongside the imminent end of the fossil-fuel economy.

This could be a late-in-the-day  attempt by the UAE to stave off unbearable heat by cashing in on the fact that oil is, for now, still in demand around the world.  (precis of an article by Jamais Cascio  Institute for the Future, published in the New Scientist).

Already too high a birthrate for the available resources,  lack of jobs, climate change and water problems are roiling the Middle East.  But we have seen nothing yet.  When the heat becomes unbearable and food un-growable the urge to get to a more moderate climate that has water will, unfortunately for all, be  immense.  The UAE mountain is simply moving the checkers around the board.

America is becoming a society governed by ghosts, a society where very rich people with no connection to the living world are “putting restrictions on our country’s wealth”.  How? Through so-called “dynasty trusts”. America has always set limits on what the wealthy can do with their wealth once they’ve died. They can erect monuments in their glory, or pass it all to their cat; but being dead themselves, they can’t do this in person. Instead, they rely on a trust set up when they were still alive to do it for them. It always used to be the case that such trusts were governed by a “rule against perpetuities”, limiting how long they could exist to 100 years or so. Since the 1990s, however, many US states have been chopping away at the “perpetuities rule” in a successful bid to get an estimated $100bn in additional trust business. In fact, 28 states now make it legal for trusts to live on almost indefinitely, thereby ensuring the houses, businesses, artworks and assets belonging to the rich are retained by their descendants in almost tax-free “dynasty trusts” for all time. In our new age of inequality, the top 10% now own 80% of the wealth. Looks like they’re going to keep it. (Mike Konczal, The Nation)

On a related issue it is amazing how many people hate the Inheritance Tax, whose purpose is to try and ensure that wealth is not held indefinitely by families who have done nothing for it. The idea of giving back to society for the benefits enjoyed over a lifetime seems to be an endangered concept. This bodes ill for society in general. Politicians and lawyers are pandering to the wealthy, who seem to be oblivious to the fact that, without general taxation, there would be no schools, roads, bridges, police, law courts, parks or even military, things that, without which, the wealthy couldn’t have made their money.   Some people still alive went to university at the expense of the taxpayer. That privilege is gone, but what a privilege!  I wish the current generation could do likewise.  Those of us who benefitted thus repay society  by paying their taxes; no fiddles or  accounts in Panama etc., and no avoidance of  inheritance tax, either. They owe it to their fellow citizens.

Social conscience, or Epicureanism in action.

The disconnect between the people and the business community community has reached huge proportions in the US.  Only one third of Americans believe large corporations are having a positive effect on the country and only 2 in 10 people surveyed say they have confidence in big business. The latter think that if they explain their needs better people will come round. These “needs” include expanded international trade, immigration reform, reduced deficits, relaxed regulation, lower corporate taxes and cuts in  Social Security and Medicare.  What they think to be the point of life is a mystery. Just increasing profits and the incomes of the the bosses?  Apparently.

Meanwhile, corporations are enjoying record profits but investing little in the economy.  Having mopped up the competition many are now simply rent- seekers. Owing to mergers and acquisitions, the number of companies listed on the stock market has dropped by half from 1997 and 2012, and  start-ups have created  few jobs and nearly enough to offset the losses caused by globalization.  Never before has big business had such an image problem.

The result is that corporate agenda is stalled in Washington. TTIP and TTP, dictated by lobbyists, are very unpopular and are going nowhere. Tax and immigration reform look non-starters, and much needed infrastructure repairs and improvements (which are plainly necessary) won’t get done because Congress will authorize no spending. Meanwhile, “top” businessmen are smarting at the comments of Trump and Sanders.  The old adage,” the business of America is business” has never looked so tired and it is entirely the fault of the bosses.

What is the answer? Break up big business, like the first (Republican), trust-busting  President Roosevelt did, and get competition back into the economy. Then strengthen the power of shareholders, whose influence is now chiefly “advisory”.  Unfortunately, space doesn’t permit me to enumerate all the other things necessary to restore the old, vibrant economy of the United States of America.

£2.8 bn is the cost to the British National Health Service of treating visitors:  students, workers on visas, tourists, immigrants, expats popping back to see their old GP and, yes, “health tourists”.

But the deliberate exploitation of the NHS by the un-entitled is estimated to be about £200m a year, which is a lot less than nearly £2bn. There are arrangements to reclaim those costs, and a while ago the government announced it would also be adding a sort of NHS levy to visas to try and recoup more of this cash.

My wife and I  get medical treatment in London as private patients and claim on insurance.  The waiting room of my London doctor’s practice is like the United Nations,  full of people from all over the world, including heavily pregnant women from the Middle East, for whom medical care appears to be “free”, no questions asked. My personal guess is that £200m a year is just that, a guess.

The difference between the EU and, say Saudi Arabia, is that if you are British and get ill in Italy or Germany there are reciprocal arrangements and treatment is free. If you go to Saudi Arabia you need your credit card – and a healthy bank account. At least, that is what I discovered when I went there. Probably, the number of women arriving in Britain to have their babies at no financial cost is exaggerated; it is nonetheless un-Epicurean in so far as it is exploitative and unfair to the taxpayer.