The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[oldberkeley]

Charlie- LOL. I know that Dew works hard to keep the BV board on track, and with all the multifaceted folks over there it can be challenging.

I realized that proximity to water is crucial before I wrote the post, and perhaps I should have eliminated the word coastline. It was the seismographically-active part of the question that I was really trying to emphasize.

I’m also self-indulgently twisting history to make a point and exercise my smart-ass sense of humor, a lifelong character fault. The Japanese government doesn’t need a time machine, I’m certain that my question was repeatedly asked and extensively debated at every level. They knew the risks, they weighed the benefits, they did it.

At what point does a nation’s history take a dramatic turn? Impossible to say precisely, everything is cause and effect, which snowflake made the avalanche? Japan’s huge, dynamic, seething population crammed onto a relatively small group of islands has always been problematical. From a strategy of isolationism to a strategy of world conquest to a strategy of superpower economics, for such an outwardly calm and orderly people they are no strangers to extremes.

They had to provide power. From all the choices—windmills to reactors and everything between—knowing full-well the geoscience of their own nation, they chose reactors. And another snowflake falls. -Gary