日本经济最大的敌人是……台风？

    但甚至一个像日本这样强大的经济体也将受到影响。埃斯特万表示，到2085年，日本可能需要额外投入306亿至1279亿日元来扩大日本所有的港口，以应对台风造成的停运期。

    埃斯特万说：“从本质上讲，由于公民被迫躲避台风，日本的经济生产力将急剧下降。”根据他的估算，日本每年因台风造成的整体损失可能高达70亿美元。

    然而，像菲律宾一样，日本的问题并不是毁灭性风暴出现频率的增加，而是它们不断升级的强度。

    “过去二十年左右，西太平洋的台风实际上已经变得不那么频繁，”麻省理工学院(MIT)的气候学家克里•伊曼纽尔说。“但大多数模型预测表明，全球变暖最终将增加最高类别飓风和台风的发生率。”对于像东京这样的日本北方城市而言，这是一个坏消息，因为它们往往躲过了这些南方风暴的正面冲击。

    那么，东京正在怎样应对这些问题呢？除了加强基础设施，日本领导人还在忙于遏制二氧化碳水平。自福岛核泄漏事故以来，日本众多的核电站已经或多或少地停止运营。目前还没有迹象表明，这些核电站短期内会重新启动。日本正在以前所未有的速度燃烧化石燃料，以维系经济的正常运行。这个岛国似乎无力阻止它已经召唤而来的复仇女神。（财富中文网）

    译者：叶寒

    But even a mighty economy like Japan's will suffer. Between 30.6 to 127.9 billion additional Yen alone could be needed by 2085 to expand all ports in the country to cope with the increase in downtime due to typhoons, says Esteban.

    "Essentially, as citizens are forced to take shelter, the economic productivity of the country dramatically decreases," says Esteban who reckons Japan's overall losses could amount to $7 billion annually thanks to Typhoons.

    Japan's problem, like the Philippines, isn't, however, an increase in the frequency of devastating storms; it is their increasing ferocity.

    "For the last two decades or so, typhoons in the western Pacific have actually been becoming less frequent," says climatologist Kerry Emanuel of MIT. "But most model projections suggest that global warming will eventually increase the incidence of the highest categories of hurricanes and typhoons." That's bad news for northern Japanese cities like Tokyo, which often escape the full force of these southern storms.

    So what is Tokyo doing about such problems? Apart from strengthening its infrastructure, the country's leaders find their hands tied over helping contain CO2 levels. Japan's numerous nuclear power stations have been more or less offline since the Fukushima disaster. And with no indication that they will fire up soon, the country is burning fossil fuels at an unprecedented rate to keep Japan Inc. in business. Japan, it seems, is powerless to stop the furies it has summoned.