In late April I was in Tokyo, giving a talk at a conference sponsored by Nikkei, the leading daily business/economics publisher in Japan (and, yes, for those of you who closely follow Asian stocks, they’re the folks who calculate the Nikkei average).  The conference focused on how Asia might move ahead with emissions trading systems, and it was publicized in their paper and opened to the public — and so we drew a nice crowd, with more than 500 people in attendance.  Prof. Yoshihiro Fujii, who heads the Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies at Sophia University, organized the meeting, and I gave a presentation entitled Emissions Trading in Asia: The View from Hong Kong. (And b.t.w., the calligraphy to the left spells out my name in Japanese — or at least I hope so, since that’s where I sat!!).

Tsukiji fish market

While in Tokyo, I also took a 5 a.m. sojourn over to the amazing Tsukiji fish market.  I had first read about Tsukiji several years ago in Carl Safina’s classic work, Song for the Blue Ocean.  That book describes the problems associated with the over-harvesting of fish stocks in the ocean, and his description of Tsukiji — the world’s largest wholesale market — was particularly memorable. It’s now become a major tourist site in the city. I had the obligatory early morning sushi breakfast in one of the market’s bustling food stalls, but having read Safina’s jeremiad, I confess to feeling just a little bit guilty as I downed the tuna specialty piece.

[Note: Nikkei published an article about the conference in June, with yours truly commenting about coordination amongst carbon markets within the region.]