🌍 It's too hot for anything

Your Insider’s briefing:
— It’s too hot for anything
— Cockroaches swarm India’s parliament
— Help, is there a diplomat on board?!

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Citing the risks in America’s heavy dependence on imported medicines, that’s President Trump’s planned new tariff on imported generics from 2029, rising from an initial 100% in 2028. Pharma stocks in India (~half America’s generics) have only dipped 2-3% — most already have a US base and are awaiting more details.

We love a good survey here at Intrigue. But you know who loves surveys more? Japan.

Earlier this year, Japan’s meteorological agency ran an online survey to name days when the temperature reaches 40°C+ (104F): the public chose kokushobi, which ~translates to “brutally hot day”. Runner up was chōmōshobi or “super extremely hot day”.

And the agency has now used kokushobi for the first time after thermometers in cities across central Japan cleared the 40°C (104F) mark on Tuesday. 

But Japan isn’t the only country schvitzing right now: 

So, with so many of our readers now pumping that AC directly into their veins, let’s look a little closer at what this all means, starting with… 

🌾 Agriculture

Last month’s heatwave destroyed nine million tonnes of crops across Europe, causing the smallest harvest in seven years, and costing the continent’s grain farmers $2B+ in earnings (aka ~two weeks of total EU agricultural subsidies). 

That initial estimate seems likely to rise — Italian farmers alone are already estimating their losses at ~$1.7B. That’s a lot of extra virgin olive oil.

But think you’ll just save some euros by ditching the salad? Think again. France lost so many broiler chickens (~three million), authorities did something that rarely happens in Europe: they relaxed regulations, allowing on-farm burials.

Next door in Italy, the Emilia-Romagna region (of parmigiano cheese fame) reported cows losing their appetite due to the heat, cutting milk output by 10%. Farmers used industrial fans and mist coolers to help, driving electricity prices higher.

That’ll all naturally flow into food inflation from autumn, with Europe’s central bank estimating a 2027 Q2 peak of 3.7%, just as the eurozone managed a five-year low. 

📉 Economy

Europe is already the world’s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures rising ~twice as quickly as the global average. One result?

Just as the continent leafs through Draghi’s 400-page tome on how to lift productivity, extreme temps hit it right in the gut: one Allianz study suggests for every degree above 30°C (86F), output per hour drops ~$1.3, while energy consumption spikes, trapping firms in a double whammy of rising costs and falling outputs.

Extrapolating that out, five consecutive years of record-breaking temperatures could cost the Japanese economy $354B, $240B for France, and $131B for Germany, while eating away at their much-needed tax revenue.

That’s why the European Commission is urging countries to spend an annual $80B on infrastructure, ecosystems, and food security to heat-proof their economies.

⚡ Energy 

What’s the first thing you do in a heatwave? No, after you crack that Bud. You turn on the AC, portable fan, ceiling fan, and maybe even dust off that Sensu fan you overpaid for at Narita. Multiply that by everyone, and that’s how EU household energy consumption for cooling doubled between 2018 and 2024.

That of course takes a toll on your energy grid, right when you need it most.

Plus you’d think solar panels would love all that sunshine, but they typically perform best below 25°C. Go nuclear instead? France’s reactors often rely on river water for cooling, but have had to curb production to prevent boiling the local fish!

🏥 Health 

We don’t want to bring the vibe down but France recorded 5,700 excess deaths linked to this abnormal heatwave, with reports of funeral homes struggling to cope.

The WHO warns heat-related mortality is now up 30% over the past 20 years, hitting vulnerable folks like the sick, elderly, and homeless. And that’s before we get to…

🏞️ The environment 

Researchers say climate change is also shaping animal behaviour: poor Iceland just registered its first-ever wild mosquito sighting, beavers are now building so many dams across the warmer tundra you can see their terraforming from space, and even the humble bumblebee has to spend more time fanning itself than sustaining its colonies.

Heck, even Africa’s camels are struggling to cope — Ethiopia just recorded a 15% spike in camel mortality due to extreme heat over the last two years alone.

So if anyone needs us, we’ll be standing directly under an industrial dairy mister until autumn arrives.

We keep treating these more-frequent and more-extreme heatwaves like seasonal surprises, but…

We keep treating these more-frequent and more-extreme heatwaves like seasonal surprises, but the research suggests they might be our new baseline. Or to put it another way, we’re basically watching 21st-century economies run on 20th-century infrastructure amid futuristic temps, then acting surprised when it gets messy.

One of the reasons we keep acting surprised is probably just psychology — we human beings suck at ‘invisible’, slow, and compounding threats. But also, these threats maybe only seem slow and invisible right now because the costs mostly still land on the distant (farmers) and the voiceless (elderly, bumblebees).

That might also explain why, when you look at those initial responses above, calling them band-aids is really too generous. Fans for cows? Burial for chickens? C’mon, that’s palliative care then funeral rites.

But we can also see in our above story the mechanisms via which these costs could increasingly transmit through to the rest of us: inflation, scarcity, illness, blackouts.

And perhaps as we feel more of those costs, the task ahead might become a little clearer: it’s going to be less about bandaids and palliative care, and more about curbing that warming while rethinking entire systems (energy, grids, cities, supply chains, institutions) for a world in which kokushobi is no longer novel.

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The above meme featuring our managing editor Jeremy went viral (or at least fungal?), channelling every diplomat’s secret hope that one day, we too might have our hyper-specific, non-transferable skillset called upon to save the day.

With thanks to some cheeky social media comments, we got to thinking of other ways a diplomat might help during an aviation emergency: like if a fight broke out between two passengers?

Fear not. That diplomat will absolutely step in and “urge” “all parties” to “cease hostilities” and “return to dialogue”. Sure, by the time the diplomat finishes the legal scrub and gets ministerial clearance, one of the passengers already got hospitalised.

But do NOT ask the diplomat to switch their encrypted phone to flight mode before take-off. You never know when their G20 deputy-assistant sherpa might need recycled talking points from 2012. It’s tough, but that’s what makes them heroes.

Yesterday’s poll: What do you think Nicaragua's future holds?

✊ Decades more Ortega family rule (44%)
🚨 Some kind of internal transition (22%)
🔥 Some kind of external intervention (33%)
✍️ Other (write us!) (1%)

Your two cents: