A Glimpse of the Future at the Tokyo Airport

I was walking through the Tokyo airport yesterday and saw a little two-year-old girl with her parents.  It occurred to me that, given life expectancies in developed countries like Japan, there was a very good chance that she would be around to see the end of the century.  That will include, I hope, many good things — but it will also include all of the climate changes for 2100.  Maybe she will tell her grandchildren of a bygone day when the seas were lower, the storms were not as bad, summer heatwaves were less unrelenting, and the world was a more benign place in general.  There was a picture of cherry trees in the airport — I wonder if they will still grow in Japan when she is old, or whether the cherry blossom festival will be a dim memory.

human dimension of climate change