Fukushima Nuclear Plant Radiation Levels ‘Lethal Within Four Hours’

Over two years after the earthquake and tsunami that destroyed entire towns and left Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant crippled and dangerously unstable, it’s hard to get this issue to rise above all the other news (and noise). BBC News reports that radioactive water leaked into the ground last week, and measurements show levels high enough to “prove lethal within four hours of exposure.” This is a problem that is not going away anytime soon.

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Infinite Growth Is Unsustainable

Capitalism, at least as we know it, requires infinite growth. For-profit companies have to continue to grow in size and increase their profits year after year or risk losing investment money. Many people have gotten very wealthy with this economic model and the rest of us, at least in industrialized countries, have benefited greatly as well. We have many modern conveniences and most of us are quite disconnected from the natural world in a way that would have been unimaginable to people only a few centuries ago. This is certainly good from the standpoint of making our lives easier but it’s not good when you look at the long term picture.

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