MayDayMayDayMayDay

Blind, deaf, dumb--ignorant to all the evidence. I've been travelling the far east for the past year; and ven though I've been very focused on the immediacy of our activities, I've also been very connected to unfolding world events of earth-shaking and earth-destroying proportions. While I’ve been absent, Deepwater Horizon unfolded and has since been relegated to the recycle bin of collective memory more efficiently that any desktop computer. Now Fukushima, a category 7 nuclear disaster over which the "critical mass" of nuclear industry PR has just about seamlessly galvanized its "containment" of further negative “fall-out” from a disaster that has turned from critical to chronic in its effects on the future of the region. Yes; although there was a response delay after the disaster, the great invisible hand of power has right-clicked the mouse and hit the delete button as this incidental file of nuclear meltdown is transferred to the memory hole of the recycle bin once more. You too will forget without knowing how your memory was manipulated. Canadian Election, May 2: Voting Green The Japanese government has already floated a plan as part of rebuilding a better, stronger nation. The area around the crippled Fukushima plant is to become a vast field of solar collectors and wind-powered turbines--a plan formulated without explaining the underlying rationale. Well, folks, the area is now a vast uninhabitable wasteland (13,000 square kilometres) entrenched in an exclusion law. However, with careful attention to levels of exposure, construction of the solar fields is technologically feasible, albeit at a greater cost than would otherwise have been the case. The other advantage is the extraordinarily low maintenance cost and therefore human on-site presence that will be required for solar fields in this wasteland. Unfortunately, this great idea is unlikely to be anything more than a speech to salve the open, post-disaster wounds of those directly affected by the catastrophe and the fears it has spread around the world--another item for right click-delete when we’re all under that soporific influence of PR lullabies. Canadian Election, May 2: Voting Green Fortunately we have a magnificent twenty-fifth anniversary to celebrate the possibility that even deleted files can be recovered! Chernobyl! The Ukraine has just raised, with great difficulty, €750,000 (Japan said it couldn’t contribute under the current circumstances) of a €1.6 billion price tag for construction of a dome that will continue to contain the hundreds of tons of nuclear material bursting to get through the decaying concrete sarcophagus that was naively postulated at the time to contain the catastrophe forever. The dome will have to be constructed offsite to avoid exposure to killing radiation and then rolled and lifted into place--the heaviest lifting job ever done in the histeory of humankind. But don’t worry, the €1.6 billion, state-of-the-art dome that will hopefully be in place before another catastrophic release of radioactive clouds over Europe and around the earth; and it will protect you until the end of your days—until the end of the century, that is—89 years. Just leave it for your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, great-great-great grandchildren; and so on, to deal with this madness for the next one-hundred thousand years. No problem—just a blink of an eye in the history and destruction of the earth (See Into Eternity trailer: www.intoeternitythemovie.com). In addition to this objective attempt to contain a disaster that is definitely not over, there are aspects of control that are more immediate and largely overlooked in the forests of Chernobyl, where there is poor forestry management and recourse at least once in the recent past to firefighters using a horse and cart to bring in water for a thankfully containable fire. But each time a forest fire occurs, more radiation is released into the atmosphere. So far it has been sheer luck that one of the huge wildfires we so often have to deal with in Canada has not happened in the forests of Chernobyl. In an attempt to forestall an aftershocking catastrophe, Patrick Evans writes in "Forest fires around Chernobyl could release radiation, scientists warn" (The Guardian, April 26, 2011): "A consortium of Ukrainian and international scientists is making an urgent call for a $13.5m (£8.28m) programme to prevent potentially catastrophic wildfires inside the exclusion zone surrounding Chernobyl's ruined nuclear power plant. The fear is that fires in the zone could release clouds of radioactive particles that are, at the moment, locked up in trees, held mainly in the needles and bark of Scots pines.... Dmytro Melnychuk, rector of the national university, said: 'Strontium-90, plutonium, and americium-241 are all extremely susceptible to upward atmospheric migration and dispersal via heat from fires. They create problems for firefighters and others who breathe them in. Radioactive smoke landing on crops … even 150km or more from the fire can create such concentrations of radiation in food it will be harmful to eat. Our studies, together with Yale University, have shown it is imperative we take measures to control the radiation [in] Chernobyl's forests.'" What on earth does each of us have the courage, honesty, and personal integrity to learn from all of this? Canadian Election, May 2: Voting Green Of course for Canada there are huge domestic environmental issues to be addressed, not least of which is Alberta's (our home Province) tar-sands oil production which--as the rest of the world understands--is the filthiest, most health-hazardous, per-barrel oil production there is. To forge ahead with this project is unconscionable. Alberta seriously lobbied the Federal Government in the 1950s (under pressure from the oil industry) to detonate underground nuclear weapons in the oilsands to force the earth to unlock its treasures. Now it is seriously considering nuclear power plants for the extraction process—all this in a province that has more sun and wind than just about anywhere in North America. Canadian Election, May 2: Voting Green From: Lois Corbett National Campaign Manager, Green Party of Canada “Four decades of public concern and very hard work has seen some success. Parliament set up Environment Canada in 1971. Public concern in the next two decades helped push through the Canada-US Acid Rain Treaty. A few especially noxious chemicals, like DDT, were banned. And governments in Canada and the US forced the soap companies to reduce phosphates in detergents--helping, in part, to stem off attack on lakes and rivers in Canada, especially Lake Erie. Another high mark was signing the Kyoto protocol in 1997, pledging to bring greenhouse gases down to 1990 levels. And now decades of your hard work is threatened. Harper's government held power for less than a year before trying to change the Kyoto emissions target from 1990 levels to 2007 levels. Just before being found in contempt of Parliament, the Harper government tabled a budget that cut 20% of Environment Canada's funding--while tar sands' subsidies were left untouched. Environmental regulations are under assault and the tar sands are expanding. We are seeing the impact of environmental chemical exposure on our children's health. There is no cap on greenhouse gases and corporations profit and pollute with no thought to the future bill that ordinary citizens will be forced to pay.” In both domestic and foreign policy--for the future of the earth and generations to come--Elizabeth May and the Green Party of Canada can be trusted. Canadian Election, May 2: Voting Green