Saturday, March 26, 2011

Japanese disaster

I've found some of the reporting from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami disaster very upsetting with the destruction of so many people's lives, homes, businesses documented so clearly. The number of deaths now numbers more than 10,000 and it looks to me that there are many more to come. What I've not understood, given the scale of the disaster, is why there has been such an obsession with the problems of the nuclear power stations. I think the coverage takes attention away from the real problems of the unfortunate people directly affected by natural disaster. George Monbiot seems to be with me on this.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I think it's a symptom of how the 'news cycle' latches on to the latest thing and rapidly forgets about 'boring' ongoing issues. Who remembers the earthquake in Christchurch? Or the floods in Australia? Or those in Pakistan? (Etc.) - all of which are still huge disasters for the people involved. Plus (in the popular imagination) 'nuclear' is synonymous with 'enormously powerful' or 'bigger than anything else', and so a 'nuclear disaster' automatically trumps any other kind.

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