This newsletter is going to make you sweat

Plus: NATO's futile promise to Ukraine, Chasing the next Tesla and more [Bloomberg]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, on a summer Friday that’s sort of rainy in London but icky elsewhere in the hemisphere. So let’s take the temperature of some of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Must-Reads - NATO’s European members are promising Ukraine [weapons]( they can’t supply. - India’s [setback]( on the way to becoming a high-tech hub. - Retail investors chasing the [next Tesla]( are being taken for a ride. - Elon Musk’s [xAI]( is a dig at Google. Do I Have to Turn Off the Aircon? What if I Don’t Have One? I am only half-joking when I tell people that I’m a refugee from humidity. Folks here in London complain when the Fahrenheit dew point is 50. That would be wonderfully comfortable in Manila, where I was born. There, the dew point is rarely below 69 and can easily go upwards of 76. (The measure marks the moment when air holds 100% water; it’s usually a few degrees lower than the actual temperature, so the higher the dew point, the greater the combination of liquid and heat in the atmosphere). Summer (and increasingly the fall) in New York City — where I lived for four decades — can rival Manila for liquefaction. The dew point for New York City on Thursday was virtually 65. Living in the UK for the past five years has been paradisiacal — as a way to beat the heat. Last year, temperatures did hit a record high — but it didn’t last more than a few days. I can deal with that. The other reason to deal with the occasional warm humidity is that few flats here are air-conditioned. But that is beginning to change as the hot and sticky days increase. The temperate days, even here, may be numbered. The solution, says Lara Williams, is not air conditioning. She [minces no words](: “Air conditioning is a disaster for the planet, containing coolants with more global warming potential than CO2 and drawing on precious energy resources which — in fossil-fuel reliant grids — only leads to a vicious cycle of more warming and more air-conditioning demand.” Her latest column looks at sustainable cooling — architectural approaches to maximizing shade, catching the wind to create ventilation and super-reflective paint. It’s a big climate battle that hasn’t yet begun — but it will have to be fought and won if we are to end the cycle. A lot will have to be done to wean the world away from the easy fix of air conditioners. Case in point: Singapore, where residents run across sizzling streets to get to the next artificially cooled space. The city sits one degree north of the equator, making it the major city closest to the sun; it also has to absorb the humidity from the strait that bears its name. One weather [site]( says that on Singapore’s least muggy day, “there are muggy conditions 100% of the time.” You can only air condition big cities so much as the planet heats up. Expect large [population movements]( — and political instability — when people can no longer sweat out the heat. I’m not joking. It’s a reason for the chaos in Syria and Europe. And why Americans are abandoning the Sun Belt for [Maine](, as Conor Sen notes. I may not have another place to go to if the UK gets too hot.  Forget Barbenheimer. This May Be the Movie of the Season. A tweeted image from Kimitachi wa Do Ikiru Ka (How Do You Live) Hayao Miyazaki has created a fantasy world that rivals Disney — or Harry Potter. Spirited Away, which came out in 2001, is an astonishing epic, unlike anything else in animated movie history. Two other movies from his company Studio Ghibli are among the most profitable movies in Japan. More than that, they have captivated the world. The images from Spirited Away are now memes on social media. And 1998’s My Neighbor Totoro is an unsurprising reference in conversations among the urban elite across all cultures. Ghibli’s latest film, however, opened as a complete mystery on Thursday. No promotion, no advertising and barely any social media presence save for the cryptic avian image on Twitter. The Japanese title Kimitachi wa Do Ikiru Ka (How Do You Live)? provides few clues, unless you’ve read the book it is supposedly based on, which was published in 1937. Miyazaki said in 2013 that he was not going to make feature-length movies anymore but changed his mind to direct this, keeping much of it under wraps until this week’s opening. The lack of publicity, as my colleague Gearoid Reidy [says](, “is an attempt to recreate the sense of wonder of going to the movies in [Miyazaki’s] youth, when all one knew was a title and a poster.” Early [reports]( from Japan say it is about a boy trying to make sense of his mother’s death with the help of a magical heron. Gearoid has tickets. I can’t wait to hear what he thinks about it. Big-Bottomed Boats to the Rescue The Rhine keeps getting shallower with each summer. And that’s not good for the huge amount of commerce that must traverse its length from Switzerland to the North Sea. Enter the Stolt Ludwigshafen, the first of a new class of Rhine barges from BASF SE that are broader, longer, more lightweight and don’t go as deep into the water as its predecessors. As Javier Blas notes, it’s a [testament to German engineering](. Even if the boat was actually built in China. A conceptual model of BASF’s new Rhine transport Photographer: Technolog It’s not a solution to environmental problems but a practical approach to them. As Javier says, “Rather than fight the causes of global warming, companies are trying to find workarounds. For green activists, that’s the wrong response. But for executives, at least it keeps their factories humming.” Telltale Charts “As long as the Federal Reserve is still on the path of interest-rate hikes, a big chunk of China’s stimulus money will only end up in dollar savings accounts.” — Shuli Ren, “[Don’t Beg for Stimulus From China’s Chronic Procrastinators.](” “When the Russian ruble stabilized soon after Russia invaded Ukraine last year, the currency’s immunity to war was often cited as evidence of Russia’s economic resilience. Now, the ruble is at its lowest level since March 2022, and it doesn’t seem to have anywhere to go but down.” — Leonid Bershidsky, “[The Ruble’s Fall Points to Pain but Not Collapse](.” Further Reading India’s northeast is in turmoil. What’s [Modi](doing about it? — Ruth Pollard Nigel [Farage](is on the wrong side of the money laundering debate. — Lionel Laurent The eight AI [superstars](who have left Google behind. — Parmy Olson Cricket may never be fully embraced by America. But it can still make [money there](. — Bobby Ghosh Spain’s July 23 vote will reignite [separatist](tension. — Rachel Sanderson The stones will cry out as Russia [imperils](Ukraine’s cultural legacy. — Howard Chua-Eoan Walk of the Town: National Portrait Gallery, London I turned 64 this week (“[birthday greetings, bottle of wine](” thank you), so I thought a look at the photography exhibition by the co-writer of the alluded to song was warranted. If you take the Embankment route from the Bloomberg building in the City, the National Portrait Gallery is a mostly pleasant 40 minute walk partly along the Thames. There you will find “Eyes of the Storm” — the pictures that Paul McCartney took while on the Beatle’s breakout 1963-1964 tours of the UK and the US. The photographs go a long way toward recreating the febrile excitement of those months, when fame, while exhausting, was still novel for the Fab Four. There they are in all their youth and, yes, innocence — John, George, Paul and Ringo — in various, sometimes slightly fuzzy, portraits intimating everything from curiosity to consternation to ennui. The one picture that I remember most, however, has not a single Beatle in it. McCartney took it from his Manhattan hotel room in February 1964. It looks across the rooftops to the great apartment buildings of the Upper West Side and Central Park West. And there, off center to the right, is the Dakota. Not quite 17 years later, after fame had hardened the Beatles and broken them apart, John Lennon was shot in front of the building as he was returning home. I heard the news that night. I was living in New York by then. And I remember the silence the city kept the next day as it mourned him. He was 40. Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm will run through Oct. 1, 2023. Drawdown You made it to the end — hopefully without breaking a sweat! Here’s a cartoon for your troubles. Keep cool and carry on. “And on the eighth day, God created air conditioning. But it was too good.”  Illustration: Howard Chua-Eoan Notes: Please send suggestions for cartoon one-liners and other feedback to Howard Chua-Eoan at hchuaeoan@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Instagram](, [TikTok](, [Twitter]( and [Facebook](. Follow Us You received this message because you are subscribed to Bloomberg's Opinion Today newsletter. 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