Sep 18, 2013 | Feature Articles
In Part One of this essay, we looked at defining the terms “paradigm shift” and “tipping point” as they apply to the multiple-systems failure scenario we find ourselves in today. As we and others have pointed out for years, these failures are pandemic. They are everywhere: Education, economy, government, social systems, peak everything, and on and on the list goes. to the point where it’s difficult to find systems that are thriving. But nowhere are the failure of systems more critical, more in your face, and more threatening than Climate Change and Fukushima. Either one of these has the potential to sound the death knell of the entire human race. But before we move to the possibility of positive paradigm shifts and the tipping points needed to that might mitigate each, let’s touch on both.
Aug 22, 2013 | Climate Change/Environment
Recently a reader of my website asked me to clarify the difference between resignation and surrender. When faced with catastrophic climate change, near-term extinction, and the worst emission of radiation in the history of the world from the Fukushima nuclear power plant, how should we respond? The reader found himself swimming in deep despair and feeling very much like giving up—perhaps even ceasing the breast strokes of vigorous swimming, plunging further into the despair, and intentionally inhaling as deeply as possible. Well, that would be suicide, and he didn’t feel ready for that—at least not in that moment, and the word “surrender” kept coming to mind, but isn’t that the same as giving up?
Dec 11, 2012 | Climate Change/Environment
So we work to strengthen human and non-human communities and the links between them. And we work to lessen the depredations and save what we can from the insatiable maw of industrial ‘progress.’ And we steel ourselves and our communities for the spastic convulsions of the industrial machine as it disintegrates. And we try to shelve the hopelessness that lingers around the edges of our thoughts. But now and then I think we need to take that hopelessness down from the shelf, put it in front of us, and look at it. And we need to say, “Hmmmm…this COULD actually happen.” And then we need to ask if there’s anything, anything at all, we can do to address it more directly.
May 5, 2012 | Nuclear Crisis
“The U.S. government right now is engaged in its own kabuki theatre to protect the U.S. industry from the real costs of the lessons at Fukushima,” Gunter said. “The NRC and its champions in the White House and on Capitol Hill are looking to obfuscate the real threats and the necessary policy changes to address the risk.”
Aug 29, 2011 | Video
Dr. Chris Busby tells us in the above video that he himself went to Japan with very sophisticated equipment and found areas in Tokyo that were 1,000 times higher than the exclusion zone around Chernobyl.
Jun 3, 2011 | Nuclear Crisis
Since the initial days of the disaster at Fukushima, Arnie and his staff at Fairewinds have produced hands down, the most thorough, measured, accurate analysis of the unfolding developments there. A feat made all the more challenging by the frequent lack of information from TEPCO and the Japanese government and media. Now today, Arnie and I will talk about the latest state of the situation at Fukushima, which remains wholly unresolved and it’s quite troubling – we should keep our eyes on it. In addition, we are going to discuss what the important factors are for you to know, as well as what pragmatic preparations those of us who live in or near nuclear installations or countries that have them should really be doing.
May 12, 2011 | Nuclear Crisis
Because we stand on the apex of the food chain. You can’t taste these radioactive food elements, you can’t see them, you can’t smell them. They’re silent. When you get them inside your body, you don’t suddenly drop dead of cancer, it takes five to sixty years to get your cancer, and when you feel a lump in your breast, it doesn’t say, “I was made by some strontium-90 in a piece of fish you ate twenty years ago.” All radiation is damaging. It’s cumulative — each dose you get adds to your risk of getting cancer. The americium is more dangerous than plutonium — I could go on and on. Depends if it rains if you’re going to get it or not. If it rains and the radiation comes down, don’t grow food, and don’t eat the food, and I mean don’t eat it for 600 years.
May 9, 2011 | Climate Change/Environment
I have been following the Fukushima story very closely since the earthquake and devastating tsunami. I have asked scientists I know, nuclear physicists and others about where they find real information. I have also watched as the news has virtually disappeared. There is something extremely disturbing going on, and having lived through the media blackout in France back in April and early May 1986, and speaking to doctors who are deeply concerned by the dramatic increase in cancers appearing at very young ages, it is obvious that information is being held back. We are still told not to eat mushrooms and truffles from parts of Europe, not wild boar and reindeer from Germany and Finland 25 years later.
