Comments for earthlover.com http://earthlover.com/wordpress Sat, 10 Dec 2011 03:49:09 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.3 Comment on Ecuador Sues Chevron for Polluting Amazon by pozycjonowanie http://earthlover.com/wordpress/2009/11/ecuador-sues-chevron-for-polluting-amazon/#comment-269 pozycjonowanie Sat, 10 Dec 2011 03:49:09 +0000 http://earthlover.com/wordpress/?p=121#comment-269 As a child growing up in Singapore, my father would pull his lovingly collected nature books and poems from the shelves of our study and read me a woodland poem by Robert Frost or a fairytale, and juxtapose it with facts and pictures about the natural world. Though we lived on the equator and were surrounded by tropical weather, on those nights, my imagination came alive with the woodland autumns, haystacks, soaring mountains, undulating hills and gurgling brooks in temperate countries far away. The magic of woodland forests lived in my mind, while in our tropical paradise I had the joy of playing in jungles full of lush raintrees and ferns, watching ants and other insects wind their way up the trunks of trees, and finding orchids and glistening spiderwebs among the tall grass. As a child growing up in Singapore, my father would pull his lovingly collected nature books and poems from the shelves of our study and read me a woodland poem by Robert Frost or a fairytale, and juxtapose it with facts and pictures about the natural world. Though we lived on the equator and were surrounded by tropical weather, on those nights, my imagination came alive with the woodland autumns, haystacks, soaring mountains, undulating hills and gurgling brooks in temperate countries far away. The magic of woodland forests lived in my mind, while in our tropical paradise I had the joy of playing in jungles full of lush raintrees and ferns, watching ants and other insects wind their way up the trunks of trees, and finding orchids and glistening spiderwebs among the tall grass.

]]> Comment on Japan’s 9.0 Earthquake Damages 4 Nuclear Reactors Fukushima Problem by crazy earthlover http://earthlover.com/wordpress/2011/03/japans-9-earthquake-damages-2-nuclear-reactors-fukushima/#comment-3 crazy earthlover Wed, 16 Mar 2011 04:08:03 +0000 http://earthlover.com/wordpress/?p=155#comment-3 Is it the fickle finger of fate or karmic law on a national scale that threatens to return radioactive terror to the country which first wielded it? Who first delivered to the Japanese people the deadly force of the atom on August 6, 1945, then later repackaged and sold it to them as a panacea for a burgeoning, intensely proud and nationalistic population, desparately yearning for first world status, and requiring huge amounts of otherwise unavailable energy to power their manufacturing monster into competition with the other comparatively huge and well resourced first world nations. What wisdom, if any, held sway during the many years of construction, deployment, and devoted reliance on nuclear power to the extent of constructing the staggering number of 54 separate reactors in a country the size of the state of Montana and situated upon some of the most seismically volatile land on Earth, a tiny landmass balanced at the convergence of four tectonic plates and producing 1/5th of all the world's earthquakes? Who would have imagined that a people raised with such an acute understanding of the tempermental and devastatingly deadly nature of the earth beneath them, whose art and language reflects their intimate surrender to it, could have been convinced of the logic to risk everything for temporary gain? One need only look back in recent recorded history to realize how obviously unsuitable such a region is for any such developments: Mino-Owari, Japan - October 28, 1891 A powerful quake caused the earth to open along a 60-mile-long line, sometimes moving as much as 40 feet. Tokyo-Yokohama, Japan - September 1, 1923 A huge 8.3 magnitude tremor displaced land 15 feet horizontally and 6 feet vertically and caused the sea bed to fall 300 meters (1,000 feet) off a nearby bay. More than half a million buildings collapsed, and a 36-foot-high tsunami swept over the coast. The two cities burned for two days and 150,000 people died. Tango, Japan - March 7, 1927 A quake struck which measured 8.0 on the Richter scale Ito, Japan - November 25, 1930 Over a period of several weeks, 4,880 moderate shocks were recorded with a record of 690 in one day. Hopefully this horrific tragedy may at least serve as a much needed and belated wake-up-call for a world in the white-knuckled grip of hyper-consumerism wherein an ever-increasing amount of energy and resources must be consumed in order to maintain profitability. It should be remembered that the great civilisations of the past, whose monumental creations still fill us with awe, accomplished these marvels without reliance upon earth-threatening energy resources. How can humanity be so easily lured to race blindly towards self-destruction at an ever-increasing rate, unwilling to wait-out the maturation of efficient, truly green energy technology? Is it the fickle finger of fate or karmic law on a national scale that threatens to return radioactive terror to the country which first wielded it? Who first delivered to the Japanese people the deadly force of the atom on August 6, 1945, then later repackaged and sold it to them as a panacea for a burgeoning, intensely proud and nationalistic population, desparately yearning for first world status, and requiring huge amounts of otherwise unavailable energy to power their manufacturing monster into competition with the other comparatively huge and well resourced first world nations.
What wisdom, if any, held sway during the many years of construction, deployment, and devoted reliance on nuclear power to the extent of constructing the staggering number of 54 separate reactors in a country the size of the state of Montana and situated upon some of the most seismically volatile land on Earth, a tiny landmass balanced at the convergence of four tectonic plates and producing 1/5th of all the world’s earthquakes? Who would have imagined that a people raised with such an acute understanding of the tempermental and devastatingly deadly nature of the earth beneath them, whose art and language reflects their intimate surrender to it, could have been convinced of the logic to risk everything for temporary gain?

One need only look back in recent recorded history to realize how obviously unsuitable such a region is for any such developments:

Mino-Owari, Japan – October 28, 1891
A powerful quake caused the earth to open along a 60-mile-long line, sometimes moving as much as 40 feet.

Tokyo-Yokohama, Japan – September 1, 1923
A huge 8.3 magnitude tremor displaced land 15 feet horizontally and 6 feet vertically and caused the sea bed to fall 300 meters (1,000 feet) off a nearby bay. More than half a million buildings collapsed, and a 36-foot-high tsunami swept over the coast. The two cities burned for two days and 150,000 people died.

Tango, Japan – March 7, 1927
A quake struck which measured 8.0 on the Richter scale

Ito, Japan – November 25, 1930
Over a period of several weeks, 4,880 moderate shocks were recorded with a record of 690 in one day.

Hopefully this horrific tragedy may at least serve as a much needed and belated wake-up-call for a world in the white-knuckled grip of hyper-consumerism wherein an ever-increasing amount of energy and resources must be consumed in order to maintain profitability. It should be remembered that the great civilisations of the past, whose monumental creations still fill us with awe, accomplished these marvels without reliance upon earth-threatening energy resources. How can humanity be so easily lured to race blindly towards self-destruction at an ever-increasing rate, unwilling to wait-out the maturation of efficient, truly green energy technology?

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