Japan is at present menaced by several concurrent, concatenating crises. But with smart and responsible energy policies and politics, it could pioneer approaches that help lead us all out of our increasing dire, energy-centred dilemmas.
Energy concerns may underlie U.S. involvement in the intervention in Libya, to the exclusion of Bahrain and Yemen.
The Chinese know why the U.S. is bombing Libya but not challenging Bahrain and Yemen: Bahrain hosts the U.S. Fifth Fleet, and Yemen’s port of Aden provides access to the Red Sea.
The Department of Defense has been busy all week feeding copy to the media on its undeniably heroic work in northern Japan. However that same press machine has been slower to report on another of its military projects currently underway in Okinawa. Since January 2011, the Okinawa Defense Bureau has been building a 50 million yen ($600,000) barrier between Camp Schwab and the public beach at Henoko.
Like the Fukushima reactors, U.S. nuclear labs lie on faults.
As Japan’s nuclear crisis deepened, Gaddafi revealed that he would cancel oil contracts with Europe and sign up instead the BRIC countries.
Would the United States have handled Fukushima better?
The Fukushima reactors survival of both an earthquake and tsunami with minimal radiation release can be a powerful selling point for nuclear power plants.
The U.S. response to the financial crisis showed scant evidence that we learned from our mistakes.
By initially overlooking the spent fuel rod pools, the Japanese let a small problem snowball into a national emergency.