the inevitability of the inevitable

Sooner or later it was inevitable that somwhere in Japan a tsunami would engulf a part of that land. After all the japanese even invented the word for the phenomenon! Tsunami means "large wave in the harbour".
We know now, for some time, what can be the causes of tsunamis. Undersea quakes of the seafloor are among them.
So it was unavoidable that some coast would be hit by such a catastrophe. The latter word is ancient greek, it means a change for the worse. (kata exactly means down, and strephein means turn)

Combine natural occurrence with human stupidity and hubris (another greek word which means overweening pride) and you have all the ingredients for disaster!

The decision of the company which runs the atomic power plants which were hit by the tsunami to place the diesel motors which power the waterpumps of the security system of the power plant directly beside the reactor building at the beach could prove the worst decision in the long history of that land!
Even more disastrous than emperor Hirohito's decision to conquere Asia.
They could have decided to put the water pumps on somewhat elevated ground, or on a sturdy tower, to keep them safe in the not unheard of case of a tsunami.
They did not!

And as a consequence of that incompetence large swaths of the most densely populated country in the world could become uninhabitable.
Imagine a cloud of aerosoles, plutonium and uran, microscopically small hanging over Tokyo for days. All particles emitting deathly radiance.
All people would have to flee elsewhere. Furthermore there is the fallout. All those particles do not stay in the air indefinitely. They sink to the earth. They are invisible as is the radiation they emit. Tokyo and all its buildings would be ruined. The very earth would become hazardous material. The water in the ponds of the imperial palace will be poison.
Furthermore rain would wash that dust away, out into the countryside, into the sea, the harbour. Fish will be contaminated.
A major part of japan would become untenable for human settlement for decades, even centuries.

That is the hubris of atomic technology. The dangers were ignored, explained away. So called experts  either lied or were no experts when atomic technology was declared "safe"!
And the madness continues. In China for example. Another densely populated country.
Russia might be excused, but only if they built those power plants in isolated areas.

Best would be if atomic power plant could be built on the moon. Since that is not feasible they should not be built at all.

Humanity is the victim of a human emotion: Greed! Greed means growth.
How is endless growth achieved in a limited system, you might ask. Yes. Destruction is the solution. Every 50 years or so large amounts of our material culture need to be destroyed for further growth to happen.
Even if you do not want to paint so bleak a picture about the inevitability of destruction there is another factor: The growth of humanity itself.
By the end of this century about 20.000.000.000,- people will inhabit the eart. They will want the same material culture as we now have. Perhaps even more advanced.
But the natrual resources of the earth are already exhausted. But now only 7 and a half billion people live. The main problem is energy. Since energy from natural sources is a finite resource the growth ideology has indicated atomic power as a solution. Massive numbers of those "engines of destruction" are built right now. Many of them in earthquake rich areas. Busheer in Iran for example.

Populations are rising in numbers, they want cheap energy, so we build an atomic power plant on a crack in the earth that could topple it any minute.

This kind of stupidity is not exclusive to Iran, no, many countries on this planet exhibit this kind of short-sightedness.

Many people blame globalization for the mad run for growth everywhere. But in reality it is greed and hubris. In Europe and North-America we live in an unprecedented wealth. The material posessions even of a jobless person living in squalor in, say Glasgow, is stupendous and staggering to even a properous person in the third world.

They want to have it too!

Greed.

In many countries the situation is so that backward ideologies and religion impede an industrial developement. In the arabian world it is (was) the inherent cleptocracy that inhibited the population at large to get development.
The oil rich monarchies of the arabian peninsula do not have a developed society. If all the guest workers and experts from the west would decamp en masse these societies would collapse instantly. Their material culture is after the fashion of the villages of Patiomkin. (Facade only)
Likewise in the rest of africa. Only when ancient traditions can be overcome such a development is feasable. The best example is South Africa.

The high cultures of asia on the other hand have the tradition of coöperation and organisation which is necessary for developement. Most notable is China and Japan.
They are only lacking a critical element.
They have a (partly) developed material culture but no real cultured society. Both countries are run by an unelected oligarchy. In the case of China quite brazenly, the communist party is emperor and pope there and it reacts allergic to any public reaction, however small.
Japan has the trappings of a modern democracy. But since WW2 one single party governed the land for over 50 years. Few years were spent under a governement from another party. This suggests a underlying oligarchy that runs things, arranges national consent and so forth.

But my main argument, from which I briefly digressed, is that the material culture of "the west" is wanted by every person not being part of it.
Only the resources are not sufficient. Be it energy or material. We see a scramble now on the world markets for "rare earths". Elements and metals that are needed for the production of modern technology. China has many remote parts, particularly in annected Tibet where these strange und rare materials are found. Other countries have them too, but the excavation would be more costly there.
So chinas rare earths are exploited for cash and political clout (at least the politburo in Bejing thinks so).
Furthermore, since China is so densely populated arable land begins to get rare. So large tracts of lands are bought in developing countries (mainly in africa) for the productions of vittels for the multitudes in China. The local populations in those countries which are not exactly small looses further agricultural space, but has no say in the affairs anyway. Local grandees trouser the monies and go and live in Paris and London.

I do not concentrate my argument in and around asian countries. In Brazil there are gigantic tracts of forest that are denuded for a few years of agriculture, but not to produce foodstuffs. NO! They grow sugar cane which is finally transformed into gasoline for the millions of cars that are run in that country. They develope right now in Brazil.

Growth. Greed.

The deforestation goes on in ever increasing speed. Unfortunately the soil of the rainforest is surprisingly poor. It can only support a rainforest which is a very closed cycle of biozoenase.
After the deforestation comes the monoculture and shortly thereafter the rains wash the soil away and thereafter comes the drought. The end-result of this process is a desert. Without the water-rich rainforest the flow of the amazon will cease. Instead there will be torrents of masses of water that rain down from the andes and are sucked up by the steppe and desert that was once the amazon basin.
This is not empty prophesy. Look to the example of Madagascar. There it has already happened.

My argument, finally, is that on this planet there is an ideology of growth. Endless growth in a limited system. This cannot work and will not. If we continue on this path many more disasters are to come. We are sawing on the branch whereupon we sit.
In our mad scramble up the flagpole we have reached hights from which we alread cannot climb down easily.

I hope I am no longer alive when we reach the end of the flagpole.