The terrifying effects of the Japaneese earthquake and tsunami should be a further reminder to us that the earth, just like the oceans, can be beautiful and placid as well as tempestuous and indescriminantly destructive-and not just ‘over there’.
In the early 17th century an earth quake off ireland caused a tsunami that roared up the bristol channel and killed between two and three thousand people. In North Devon we can already see the effects of rising sea levels (go and look at the pebbleridge at Westward Ho!) and extreme weather is becoming more frequent.
What ever man builds, however well planned, constructed and protected, nature can destroy it it a sudden cataclysm or more slowly. When that construction is a nuclear power station, the potential devastation is almost unimaginable. Too many forget there are still three hundred hill farms in North wales where the sheep cannot be sold for human consumption because the land is still contaminated by caesium 137 blown in from Chernobyl.
Nuclear power stations are usually constructed on low lying land by the sea for cooling purposes. Yet the coalition government, like the labour government before it, is planning a new series of nuclear power stations at Hinkley point, Dungerness and Sizewell in Suffolk.
How many remember the storm surge in the North Sea in 1952 that flooded vast tracks of land and killed hundreds of people? How many know that Hinkley Point sometimes has to shut down when there is a gale blowing from the North?
The argument is always that we have no alternative if we are to keep the lights on and keep growing the British economy. This argument is patently untrue.
There is nothing in the natural world that is centralised and unique to itself. Every organism contributes to the whole. If we were wise, we would follow natures example, and instead of centralising power sources we should be looking at maximising the resources of local communities. How?
Firstly, by energy conservation. Secondly, by building small scale Hydro and Geo-thermal plants etc. I hate the building of large scale wind farms that are despoiling our beautiful landscape, but i would have no objection to one or two turbines being erected on an industrial estate.
It is surely the height of arrogance that in such an uncertain and war torn and economically divided world that we should be even considering building a new series of Nuclear Power stations – as if, our civilisation is going to be around for the next four of five thousand years with the technicians and scientists to look after and dispose of the life destroying nuclear waste.
Consider the words of the poet Shelly, ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; look on my works ye mighty, and despair’.
Let us remember that we are tempory stewards of the Earth, its animals and finite resources. We shall reap a terrible judgement if we ignore this fact and our children will curse us for the depleted and poisoned inheritance we leave them.