Note to the World

Because we seem to have forgotten this, a note: 

Nuclear power is a really, really, really, really, really bad idea.

No matter when technological safeguards we put in place, and Japan is ahead of the game on this, nuclear power can never, ever be made safe.

And to be clear--the earthquake is a natural disaster. Any radiation poisoning caused by the nuclear meltdown is not a natural disaster. That is human caused, 100%.

Japan Forced to Confront Its Eating Habits

Japan is freaking out because the world's fish are disappearing. To be specific, the numbers of bluefin tuna that the Japanese love for sushi are declining rapidly, largely, though not entirely, because of the insatiable Japanese market for them. Of course, the Japanese are going to do nothing except demand that no measures are taken to change this. They wouldn't want to give up their fish for 5 years in order so that they can eat them for longer after that period!

This shortsightedness is hardly a Japanese characteristic. We are no different except that most of our meat comes from land-based mammals. However, our own love for Filet-o-Fish at McDonald's is sending other species near extinction. Within 15 to 20 years, we will have very few choices for eating fish. I wonder what our reaction will be? Anger at the past for not dealing with the problem? Probably. But we'll probably have the same habits in 20 years and will be rapidly ending the existence of any number of other species.

Conservation and Economic Collapse

The core of my pessimism about long-term economic recovery is summed up by this Times article, blaming conservation in Japan for that nation's continued stagnation.

Today, years after the recovery, even well-off Japanese households use old bath water to do laundry, a popular way to save on utility bills. Sales of whiskey, the favorite drink among moneyed Tokyoites in the booming ’80s, have fallen to a fifth of their peak. And the nation is losing interest in cars; sales have fallen by half since 1990.

So conservation kills economies. If this is true, we have two choices:

A. Consume to the end of time, use up all our resources, have a relatively brief period of economic growth, and then experience a complete collapse of our economy and civilization.

B. Conserve our resources and end up in a long-term recession like Japan.

Are these really our only two options? While I'm rarely comfortable with such stark choices, in this case, it may be true. People talk of the profits we can make on a green economy. No doubt there's a lot of truth to that, but only so long as those projects promote "green consumption." We still have to use lots of energy so those companies make money. We still have to buy new cars. We still have to buy shade-grown coffee and organic vegetables and free range beef. Cutting consumption, i.e., the real way to be green, is the worst thing we can do if we want the economy to expand.

Capitalism is predicated on unrestricted use of resources. We might conserve timber in this nation, but without a slackening of demand, it just leads to trees being cut in some other country's forest. We benefit locally, but globally the resource consumption has to grow if the economy is to flourish. We now face a situation where we simply don't have the resources to continue on this path. We are at peak oil, peak coal, peak rare minerals that go into computer, peak timber, peak everything. Commodity prices have fallen in the face of the recession. Theoretically, this should spur consumption, but if consumption reached the levels of 2 years ago, prices would again skyrocket.

So what do we do? How do we escape these twin disasters? How do we not destroy the Earth and also not live in poverty? Is there a way out?

I don't know. But if there we want to save the planet and live a decent life, we need to make major changes.

The first step has to be reorienting our economic standards. We need to rethink what a healthy economy means. This is hard and painful, as we are finding out during this recession. We need to find new ways of thinking about economic success that are separate from unrestrained resource use, personal consumption, and raw profit.

Take housing. Housing is at the core of our economic crisis--bad loans, inflated prices, etc. But even when the housing market was at its peak, many were crying out over the massive problems this causes--uncontrolled suburbanization, air pollution, use of oil, climate change, the paving over of America. These are terrible things. Yet our society privileges housing starts as the gold standard of success. Measuring economic growth through housing starts is a terrible idea--it encourages single family units, unsustainable sprawl, and climate change. Moreover, what do housing starts mean in terms of satisfaction in life? Wouldn't other measurements do a much better job of measuring people's satisfaction and the overall health of society? Instead, we need to promote multifamily housing, small spaces with community gardens, parks, and green space, and vibrant urban centers and then find a way to take their measurements to judge how we are doing.

The Japanese people interviewed in the story don't seem unhappy, though unemployment problems persist that cannot be ignored. If people want to conserve, regardless of the reasons why, shouldn't society promote that instead of calling it a problem that threatens to undermine the future?

That our addiction to unrestrained consumption means constant growth of unsustainable products to survive makes me extraordinarly pessimistic about our future. If the Japanese doing crazy things like not buying new cars every 3 years and reusing water is a disaster, then I just don't know where we are headed as a society. People need jobs and we as a society need to conserve. I feel the only way out is to completely reconsider our values as people and work to make people happy in local communities, working together to ensure a decent standard of living, good health care, safe food, and strong communities for all.

To choose otherwise means complete disaster for civilization within a century at the outside.

Greatest Security Inspection Ever

I'm just reprinting the whole story.

As a test of airport security, a customs officer planted marijuana in the side pocket of a random suitcase at Narita International Airport in Tokyo, the BBC reports (news.bbc.co.uk).

The test failed when the sniffer dogs were unable to detect the pot. But the officer could not remember which bag he had used.

Using an actual passenger’s suitcase is against regulations, and the airport’s customs service has apologized.

Meanwhile, the marijuana is still out there. “Anyone finding the package has been asked to contact customs officials,” according to the BBC. So far, nobody has spoken up.

I clearly should be traveling to Japan more often.

Historical Image of the Day

Takasago International Iwata scent and flavor factory expansion in Shizuoka prefecture, Japan. If their products smell as good as this place looks, our 2009 scents will be superb.

Hunting Dolphins

This is an interesting story about a village in Japan that hunts dolphins. Even in Japan, that's generally not done, but the government doesn't really do anything about it.

While we might (rightfully) think of hunting dolphins as a bad thing, the Japanese dolphin hunters have a fairly compelling argument:

To some puzzled people in rural Japan, the question comes down to this: What's the difference between killing and eating a dolphin, and killing and eating a fish? Or a chicken? Or a cow?

Many Japanese consider the deer a sacred messenger from the gods, he says, but they would never suggest that people in other parts of the world stop venturing into the woods on a quest for venison.

On the surface, this is a good point. But there is a fundamental difference. Cows and chickens are domesticated animals. They are farmed. There is a fairly infinite supply of them, assuming some mass pandemic doesn't wipe them out. Dolphins are wild, threatened species. The equivalent of hunting dolphin is not a chicken, it's an elephant.

Of course, the same goes for people who eat most fish. That tuna you are eating isn't coming from a farm. Tuna are heavily overfished and their population is collapsing. If you are eating tilapia or another farmed fish that's one thing. But eating a wild fish is the same as eating a wild hippo or tiger. This is why I believe fish are the least ethical category of modern meat. Everything is farmed, often in a bad way it is true, but nonetheless, at least we are destroying a species by eating them.

I should note that deer is kind of a special case. So few people hunt them that their populations are rising rather than falling. Unless we bring back wolves, hunting this wild animal is OK. If everyone started doing it though, that would be something quite different.

Historical Image of the Day

Bataan Death March, Philippines, 1942

Historical Image of the Day

US Army installing quonset hut, Japan, 1947 or 1948

"It was serious back then"

This story on forced confessions in Japan is rather disturbing. While not as severe, perhaps, as electric shock to the genitals (a common practice in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and elsewhere during their respective dictatorships) or forcing prisoners' heads under water to extract confessions. Nonetheless, incidents like 17 straight days of 10-hour interrogation sessions and forcing the charged to stop on names of their family members (which, if it is indeed an odd twist on forcing Christians to stomp on the cross, is rather unique) clearly have caused mental and physical stress on innocent people in Japan. One hopes the change to a jury-based system in 2009 will fix things for the most part, but one has to wonder if these fforced (false) confessions are just going to go away that easily.

Asia for Asians!

Marwaan Macan-Markar has a good article at Asia Times about the backlash in Thailand to the new Thailand-Japan free trade agreement. Why? Because it would allow Japan to dump an unlimited amount of toxic waste in Thailand. Thai environmental groups are up in arms and it is embarrassing the already embattled Thai military government.

But hey, Japan is getting smart and learning from the United States--why physically conquer the nations in your sphere of influence when you can just use them for natural resources, export your economic problems upon them, and dump all your toxic waste in their soil? It's like physical imperialism with all of the benefits and none of the downside. Well, unless you're Thai that is. But who cares about them? They should be sacrificing for the benefit of the great Asian power anyway.
Asia for Asians!

Historical Image of the Day

First Landing of Matthew Perry in Japan, 1853. Lithograph from 1855