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| Photo from RT |
I have not posted in awhile, apologies for that. I am also sick with flu-like crap and have been for several days, and this may be affecting my negative outlook, so apologies for that as well.
I will dispense with the pleasantries so we can get on to the business at hand. The Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) lied about the magnitude of the meltdown at Fukushima, continue to lie about it, and other governments and institutions seem happy to continue with the whole charade in the name of not instilling panic. It was initially reported to not be as bad as Chernobyl: it is clear now that it was much worse than Chernobyl. Chernobyl being on land, it was much easier to contain the spread of radioactivity. Fukushima is on the shore, and the spread of radioactivity was and is still impossible to contain, and probably never will be possible to contain, so more radioactive elements are going to continue seeping from the site into the ocean for the foreseeable future. Moreover, truly vast amounts of radioactive materials, debris, water and fuel rods kept on the site are still being kept in an earthquake and tsunami zone, with the very real certainty that on some finite time scale these materials will again be subject to earthquake and tsunami unless they are promptly dealt with in some way. Which does not appear to be happening and really is not being planned for in any way that the Japanese Government or TEPCO is sharing with the rest of us. The site is still an ongoing humanitarian and ecological disaster. It may be a couple decades before we truly comprehend what has been done to the planet here, and by then the damage to human lives and ocean ecosystems will have already been done and we will have created the next great disaster already by then. Eating seafood from the North Pacific may in the end prove to be an unacceptable radiation exposure risk now and for the rest of our lifetimes.
Moreover, the only folks who seem to be keeping Fukushima on their radar screens are the usual fear-mongers like Alex Jones, who are long on identifying problems but short on any sort of constructive approaches to them. They do have to be congratulated at least for realizing the magnitude of the issues and for avoiding the walking sleep that the rest of the planet seems to have voluntarily laid upon itself concerning them. They are also merchants whose product is fear, and fear is not conducive to clear thinking. Occupying the mind with fear is for those who do not fully realize that on a personal level (and ultimately on a planetary level as well), disaster and death are never avoidable. Suffering and death will eat you, it is just a matter of how soon and how inventively it will eat you and how you choose to define your life in the meantime. ;)
The real long-term problem is not Fukushima. The U.S. did over a hundred nuclear tests in the Pacific from 1946 onwards, many with hydrogen bombs that spread demonstrable fallout over populated areas. Fukushima is a unique event in a sense, but in another sense it is simply part of an ongoing and ever-expanding pattern, and it is that pattern that concerns me today.
Every time humanity plays God and it comes back to bite them in the ass, corrective actions are taken... against that particular event. And that not always, and always very belatedly. When it became clear that DDT was killing bird life and laying waste to whole ecological communities, it was finally banned... about a decade after Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Meanwhile, in those decades after DDT started to be widely used, we invented whole new ways to eff up the biosphere, and we continue to do so since then. Always, corrective actions have been taken against particular symptoms of human greed and overreaching, not against the core disease itself. It is like a patient having serious disease symptoms for decades, and the doctor's response to this grave condition is to keep buying his patient boxes of kleenex. It is our way of life that is the disease, not ultimately Fukushima. It is the willingness of our people and governments to turn a blind eye to danger as long as profit is involved, that is the disease.
Somewhere along the line we humans got the idea that money was more important than life; power more important than happiness; displays of ostentation or technological prowess more important than healthy children or healthy forests or clean nutritious food. Whatever we say we are doing, what we are actually doing is valuing money, status, progress, and false pride over life itself. That is what human civilization is based on now. And no piecemeal or incremental change is going to correct that, it is going to require exponential change in the fundamental values of worldwide civilization. Until that happens, expect more of the same. New government regulations particularly in the case of nuclear power can slow the fool's march to oblivion, but it cannot stop it so long as Mankind is developing new powers and new and profitable ways to destroy the planet every day. We can and should try to convince people to take human and environmental safety as the first order of business whenever a corporation introduces a new product or technology, but even that is still a finger in the dike of a human-made disaster.
Playing devil's advocate, even a complete cultural paradigm shift away from consumerism and the cult of progress and towards sustainability and biosystem health still leaves us with billions who know no other way to live, even if they intellectually agree with such a change. Were such an uncanny miracle to take place, that everyone suddenly agrees with us... well they might agree with us but they still have to eat. I can imagine one such worker saying, "You're totally right Bob, I agree with you 100%, but I still have to work at Tasty Pollution Biscuits Ltd. in order to feed myself, and I know no other work." More and more people opting out of this destructive way of life might gradually start mutating planetary society in a safer direction over the course of centuries, but what new horrors will occur in those intervening centuries? It's a bit of a pickle.
But in any case, it is past time to start having the conversation about this. Our whole way of life is sinking and dragging us down with it. Drive the stake into the vampire's cold black heart, either it will kill us or we will kill it. It's just that simple. And the first and most needful thing on the way to killing the vampire is to actually start talking about the vampire, which people are very loath to do. That is why I posted this, ultimately, to start conversation. We are passengers on the Titanic and it is past time to start talking about the hole in the ship and what we are going to do about it, if we can do anything...
I will dispense with the pleasantries so we can get on to the business at hand. The Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) lied about the magnitude of the meltdown at Fukushima, continue to lie about it, and other governments and institutions seem happy to continue with the whole charade in the name of not instilling panic. It was initially reported to not be as bad as Chernobyl: it is clear now that it was much worse than Chernobyl. Chernobyl being on land, it was much easier to contain the spread of radioactivity. Fukushima is on the shore, and the spread of radioactivity was and is still impossible to contain, and probably never will be possible to contain, so more radioactive elements are going to continue seeping from the site into the ocean for the foreseeable future. Moreover, truly vast amounts of radioactive materials, debris, water and fuel rods kept on the site are still being kept in an earthquake and tsunami zone, with the very real certainty that on some finite time scale these materials will again be subject to earthquake and tsunami unless they are promptly dealt with in some way. Which does not appear to be happening and really is not being planned for in any way that the Japanese Government or TEPCO is sharing with the rest of us. The site is still an ongoing humanitarian and ecological disaster. It may be a couple decades before we truly comprehend what has been done to the planet here, and by then the damage to human lives and ocean ecosystems will have already been done and we will have created the next great disaster already by then. Eating seafood from the North Pacific may in the end prove to be an unacceptable radiation exposure risk now and for the rest of our lifetimes.
Moreover, the only folks who seem to be keeping Fukushima on their radar screens are the usual fear-mongers like Alex Jones, who are long on identifying problems but short on any sort of constructive approaches to them. They do have to be congratulated at least for realizing the magnitude of the issues and for avoiding the walking sleep that the rest of the planet seems to have voluntarily laid upon itself concerning them. They are also merchants whose product is fear, and fear is not conducive to clear thinking. Occupying the mind with fear is for those who do not fully realize that on a personal level (and ultimately on a planetary level as well), disaster and death are never avoidable. Suffering and death will eat you, it is just a matter of how soon and how inventively it will eat you and how you choose to define your life in the meantime. ;)
The real long-term problem is not Fukushima. The U.S. did over a hundred nuclear tests in the Pacific from 1946 onwards, many with hydrogen bombs that spread demonstrable fallout over populated areas. Fukushima is a unique event in a sense, but in another sense it is simply part of an ongoing and ever-expanding pattern, and it is that pattern that concerns me today.
Every time humanity plays God and it comes back to bite them in the ass, corrective actions are taken... against that particular event. And that not always, and always very belatedly. When it became clear that DDT was killing bird life and laying waste to whole ecological communities, it was finally banned... about a decade after Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Meanwhile, in those decades after DDT started to be widely used, we invented whole new ways to eff up the biosphere, and we continue to do so since then. Always, corrective actions have been taken against particular symptoms of human greed and overreaching, not against the core disease itself. It is like a patient having serious disease symptoms for decades, and the doctor's response to this grave condition is to keep buying his patient boxes of kleenex. It is our way of life that is the disease, not ultimately Fukushima. It is the willingness of our people and governments to turn a blind eye to danger as long as profit is involved, that is the disease.
Somewhere along the line we humans got the idea that money was more important than life; power more important than happiness; displays of ostentation or technological prowess more important than healthy children or healthy forests or clean nutritious food. Whatever we say we are doing, what we are actually doing is valuing money, status, progress, and false pride over life itself. That is what human civilization is based on now. And no piecemeal or incremental change is going to correct that, it is going to require exponential change in the fundamental values of worldwide civilization. Until that happens, expect more of the same. New government regulations particularly in the case of nuclear power can slow the fool's march to oblivion, but it cannot stop it so long as Mankind is developing new powers and new and profitable ways to destroy the planet every day. We can and should try to convince people to take human and environmental safety as the first order of business whenever a corporation introduces a new product or technology, but even that is still a finger in the dike of a human-made disaster.
Playing devil's advocate, even a complete cultural paradigm shift away from consumerism and the cult of progress and towards sustainability and biosystem health still leaves us with billions who know no other way to live, even if they intellectually agree with such a change. Were such an uncanny miracle to take place, that everyone suddenly agrees with us... well they might agree with us but they still have to eat. I can imagine one such worker saying, "You're totally right Bob, I agree with you 100%, but I still have to work at Tasty Pollution Biscuits Ltd. in order to feed myself, and I know no other work." More and more people opting out of this destructive way of life might gradually start mutating planetary society in a safer direction over the course of centuries, but what new horrors will occur in those intervening centuries? It's a bit of a pickle.
But in any case, it is past time to start having the conversation about this. Our whole way of life is sinking and dragging us down with it. Drive the stake into the vampire's cold black heart, either it will kill us or we will kill it. It's just that simple. And the first and most needful thing on the way to killing the vampire is to actually start talking about the vampire, which people are very loath to do. That is why I posted this, ultimately, to start conversation. We are passengers on the Titanic and it is past time to start talking about the hole in the ship and what we are going to do about it, if we can do anything...
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| "Cocktails will now be served on the after deck, please watch your footing..." |
No, not if we can. We CAN do something. Start talking about what we are going to do differently from now on, now that we can no longer ignore the hole in the ship. Maybe we can change the course of the world and maybe we can't, but we can change the course of our denial about the world and start living more honestly with ourselves. Honesty, decency, courage and integrity may not patch hulls, but even on the decks of the sinking Titanic they are still good things. And who knows what good may come from such good things.
It's a start.
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