Friday, May 07, 2004



JAPAN AS ECO-TOUR DESTINATION? BETTER GET HERE FAST!

It would be a belly laugh if it weren't so politically pathetic, hearing Japan's Environment Ministry tossing about ecobuzz phrases as though they were public works contracts, phrases like "unspoiled natural beauty," "preserve the environment," "minimalist approach," "contribute to conservation and environmental education," getting all gushy about the environment even as local construction companies under said public works contracts dam the rivers, pave the mountain streams and reorganize the mountainsides, as power and phone companies string their new thick yellow and black bumblebee cables through the skies of "protected" national forests. It's like listening to the Son Of Bush talk about "compassion."


Maybe those imaginary ecotourists can tour the huge industrial gasification incinerator the very same government is manipulatively planning to build in a national forest preserve (actual location shown in photo)
right above Lake Biwa, water and air source for the 20 million people of the Kansai area (mostly oblivious regarding this), and I guess those tours won't go near the dozens of oceanside nuclear power plants and the nuclear reprocessing plant and the world's only plutonium-powered plant and likely more coming, so there won't be that much of Japan left to eco-tour. And since many of those radioactive facilities are on earthquake faults, if one of them goes there won't be eco- or any other kind of tourism in Japan for a half-life of maybe 25,000 years. But who really cares, the Environment Ministry? Maybe they'll all just tour the Big Incinerator Parking Lot of Tomorrow, with excellent mobile phone reception if you don't breathe too much.

Story in all seriousness here.

(Also note greatly detailed comments hereto, from butuki, with thanks.)