Japan’s real disaster

Reuters by Gregg Easterbrook | Mar. 16, 2011 (Opinion)

The situation in Japan is horrific — but because of the earthquake and tsunami, not because of the malfunctioning atomic reactor station. The earthquake and its awful aftermath killed at least thousands of people, perhaps tens of thousands. That is an unspeakable tragedy. The damaged reactors at Fukushima haven’t killed anyone, and while posing a clear danger, especially to workers heroically fighting the malfunction, the odds are that any harm to ... Full Story »

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by Edward Ericson Jr. - Mar. 16, 2011

It's OK, but it's of a piece with prevailing pro "green" nuke thinking. Wm Saletan was first out the gate with this on Sunday with this Slate bit: http://www.slate.com/id/2288212/ The argument goes like this: anti-nukes are panicky luddites; oil and gas production and burning kill more people; therefore, nukes are good and everyone needs to calm down. It's not entirely wrong, as far as it goes, but if we're going to be rethinking our energy choices we might want to consider why we're content with all these deaths--from all these industries--and why we are unable to fathom serious energy conservation.

Easterbrook is the guy who explained to folks how dioxin is really not much worse than table salt. He's made his career is a contrarian to those he deems fear mongers--i.e. environmental activists. Here's an old piece on the "Environmental Good News Industry" for context on Easterbrook's career: http://www.albionmonitor.com/9611a/goodnewsindustry.html Since that 1995 Newsweek piece, I take everything he writes with a grain of, uh, dioxin.