Godzilla2014
In Majuro, Marshall Islands in the early 80s, Iwitnessed a delayed radiation effect. Anunder-40 male was walking down the street when he collapsed and the islandhospital pronounced him DOA. Thediagnosis was death by radiation where the story told me was that he ate a fishcarrying a dormant rogue atom that became active inside his body. The wild cavorting of radiated neutrons actedlike a beam that went slashing the poor man’s innards like a laser causingterminal damage.
I am no scientist. I had difficulty understanding, let alone,accepting the explanation, but there was no debate on what killed the man. It came as an effect from one of the nuclearbomb tests almost 30 years before in the Bikini atoll north of Majuro,delivered by a fish!
This week, a 2014 version of Godzilla debuts inAmerican cinemas. There are 28 films inthe franchise that began in 1954 when the movie Godzilla was first released. Considered a filmographic metaphor for theUnited States that heartlessly delivered the A-bomb to hapless civilians in Hiroshimaand Nagasaki, it was also an allegory of nuclear weapons to Japan’s memory 60years ago of the effect of a Bikini test on its fishermen fishing in the Marshalls. The winds rained atomic fallout on their boat,scaling skin and shortening everyone’s breath, to put it mildly.
The early Godzilla (Gojira, in Nihonggo) films portrayed its character as afrightening, nuclear monster. Japanese Gojira is actually a portmanteau of theword for gorilla (gorira) and a whale(kujira). Godzilla was described as across between a gorilla and a whale, a prehistoric sea monster awakened bynuclear fusion. The word G-O-D on thefirst syllable of the English translation alludes to power, infinite and almighty! Save the first Godzilla was not of MotherNature but straight out of human invention, depravity’s force majeure!
We are the only nation that had used atomic power onpeople. And with Russia, we hold thecapability to destroy life on planet earth seven times over, as if it makes adifference after the first!
If Godzilla is an allusion and a metaphor, ours in2014 comes as climate change. FloridaSenator Rubio just came out recently claiming that humans do not contribute toclimate change. This was just a weekafter the US Congress itself issued an 800-page report on climate change andhow our hydrocarbon emissions have contributed to its happenstance. This reminds me of the tobacco industry whenI lived in Virginia and North Carolina saying that there is no causality connectingtobacco smoking and lung cancer!
One only has to take a sweeping look at thehurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, droughts and floods occurring with greater strength in unlikely places to realize that something dramatic has changed and with the amount ofhydrocarbons we have emitted into the atmosphere, existentially, at least, weknow in our bones that we did something amiss to the environment.
Of course, our capacity for denial knows no end. Why, when two regions of Ukraine held areferendum, Kiev not only ignored it; it claimed that the region was notholding one, and if they did, they will just declare it “illegal”, in the sameway Crimea rejoining Russia is also “illegal”. Duh!
We continue to rely on fossil fuel for energy when thealternative (e.g., liquid hydrogen) is not only possible but cheaper. The cost we are paying for an economy basedon oil, natural gas, coal, and now, tar sands and other bituminous ingredientsis wasteful. Just look at all the warzones and why they are that way. EastTimor uses the US dollar for its currency, for heaven’s sake! “In defense of freedom” was that warfought? Nope! Natural gas, Matilda. Likewise, in Syria, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, theStans, Nigeria, Libya, Egypt, China’s continental shelf and the islands of SouthChina Sea (the 2012 Penguin World Map labels the Luzon Sea!), etc., areliterally fossil fuel aflame, polluting the air, but we continue because itbenefits the powerful few!
If Mark Rubio can honestly deny human contribution toclimate change, why can’t we deny the reality of anything we do not approveof? Some “truthers” are now claimingthat the Sandy Hook shooting was contrived, and yes, made up in a TV studio asa tactic to take away the constitutional right to bear arms. Right.
Let the human touch click on almighty power, in theway China committed its rapid rail technology to the Nairobi-Mombasa line inKenya, and possibly, a pan-African rail system. Doable. Why, someone is actually figuringthe practics of connecting Shanghai to LA through Russia’s Far East, tunneling underthe Bering Strait into Alaska, to BC-Canada and down the west coast to CA. And why not a Hong Kong to Paris silkrail? Not a flight of fancy. It’s grounded. Montreal-to-Rio via Mexico and Santiago? Check. Better and cheaper thanMH370s! The technology is in place tomake this visioning feasible, a Godzilla of a different pedigree.
Time to make human technology user-friendly, I say,even as I am sure to die of asthma in Dong Bei’s coal-loaded air!
j'aime la vie
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yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!
