What's the future of the fur industry?
Europe still has a fur industry?
Maybe I'm naive, but I thought that the commercial fur industry had gone the same way as whaling and the use of CFCs: extinct.
But it turns out that Europe still has a thriving fur industry, that only now looks precarious thanks to covid-19 and the fact that the little animals that get slaughtered for their pelts have been shown to carry the virus.
Denmark, yes the place that everyone heaps praise on because everyone sustainably commutes to the slaughterhouses on bicycles, is the world's biggest producer of mink, and now the country has decided to kill all of their remaining minks, which number in the millions, to stop the spread of the virus.
Meanwhile in China, the government there has made the decision to abolish their limiting two-child policy to include new measures to encourage more births and address its rapidly ageing population as part of its new 2021-25 “five-year plan”.
The new policy will include financial incentives to encourage people to have more children once again, because it's difficult to grow an economy successfully if you don't have a growing population.
You'll remember that in the 1970s the Chinese controversially decided to limit all couples to just one child, which radically curbed their population growth, but as also produced some extraordinary long-term consequences.
Reuters
In Tokyo Japan - Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios is almost finished and initial images of the new theme park show the amazing detail of the park which will be welcoming gaming fans and visitors next year.
Japan has the world oldest population, but they are still creating amusement parks for children from other parts of the world.
That's foresight for you.
Luke Plunkett