Japanese Earthquake - Jesus Out To Sea ?

The rescue of a Japanese man swept out to sea on the roof of his house recalls the title short story of a collection by the US writer James Lee Burke, "Jesus Out To Sea", in which a similar fate befalls some citizens of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In a disaster situation greater in magnitude than even those tragic events which have befallen the Gulf of Mexico in recent years, much is currently being made of Japan's orderly and courageous response to the largest earthquake in its history and the accompanying tsunami.

The country's Shinto religion bears some similarity to James Lovelock's Gaia Theory, with the forces of nature regarded as deities capable of wreaking utmost havoc on human society. It is curious, therefore, that both these should lend support to the development of nuclear power.

For few technologies would seem less compatible with major disruption in the earth's crust than nuclear, yet it is precisely country's prone to these, such Japan and Iran, which have raced to develop their capacity, when renewable options like solar and sea power are readily available.

Indeed, Japan would surely have been far better to have deployed the country's undoubted technological brilliance in harnessing wind and wave power. Instead the sea is now being used to appease nuclear reactors which have "gone critical"*

Although it may seem uncompassionate, and even unchristian, to raise these issues at the present time, events in Japan must inform the current escalation in nuclear power, which, sadly, many so-called environmentalists have chosen to endorse.

Nuclear power is not an appropriate technology, although along with coal, oil and gas it has to be regarded as a transitional one: and the sooner the world makes a transition out of these unsustainable technologies the better.

Compassion for the Japanese from the world's peoples is certainly called for at the present time, but so is compassion for the environment. This is not compatible with nuclear proliferation, particularly in a climate change scenario with increased tectonic activity.

*Going Critical is the title of a book on nuclear power by Walt Patterson