I’m from Birmingham, a city which gave birth to the industrial revolution, in which we hear that the sky used to be black owing to all the pollution. It took government to take action to clean up industry, there was no way industrialists in Victorian-era England would have taken any steps to protect their workers’ health. They probably would have just encouraged them to have more children and bring them to work at the factories!

If you own a property, who says the coal burner owes you any compensation? I read somewhere that the state holds a monopoly on violence, which is what allows them to arbiter what is right and wrong. Without them to police the negative externalities to your house, just two options would be open to you: 1. be paid (probably not nearly enough) to compensate you for the dirty air, the resulting damage to your health, and the lower propertly values, or 2. take a crowbar to the coal burner’s head.

What I’m saying is that there *might* be a way to way to work this out via the free market, but I agree this hasn’t been readily demonstrated yet.

The presumption is always that without government regulation, we’d all be living in dire straights, eating dangerous food and breathing in pollution. But it’s *progress* that has done a lot to fix these problems, and most that progress was achieved via free market mechanisms.

Sure, nuclear requires a lot of government support to set up a nuclear power plant, but government also provides a lot of incentives to develop renewable sources of energy. If we relied purely on free markets to get us to a stage where we relied mostly on renewable sources the natural world would become much less pleasant.

I think the history of Kashima represents a heavily Japanese problem, in which central government was too forceful in applying its will in the face of prefectural opposition.

Just look at this quote from the end: “We absolutely need it,” Yoshifumi Matsuyama, the chairman of Oma’s Chamber of Commerce, said of the plant. “Nothing other than a nuclear plant will bring money here. That’s for sure. What else can an isolated town like this do except host a nuclear plant?”. That’s ridiculous and twisted, of course there’s more options open to the town. What about becoming more open to job-creating immigration (perhaps providing immigrants with visas that only allow them to work in that town or prefecture), or creating special economic zones like China did so businesses decide to set up there, or any number of ideas they could come up with?

I personally think that the problem isn’t greed, but ignorance.
To quote an interesting article by Tsutomu Toichi “The public’s interest in environmental problems is high, but until recently interest in the energy problem was low.”

This addresses one issue always left aside: Japan’s energy self-sufficiency.
As you know, it is about only 20%, which means that Japan must import 80% of its energy, by the means of Oil, Gas or Nuclear fuel.

Of course, there aren’t much natural resources to tap in here, which explain partially all the choices made in Energy policy in the 60\70′s. But those choices are revealing extremely hazardous…
Nuclear: Regardless of the wastes (a huge problem indeed) Nuclear energy is fairly safe when handled properly. But when you leave to private companies the task to build and manage Nuclear facilities in well known Quake-Tsunami hazard areas, anybody can tell that it is not handled properly, therefore the Fukushima accident was only waiting to happen.
Oil and Gas are far less dangerous, but “the attitude spread among the public that oil is abundant and can be bought anytime as long as you have money” is totally inmature. For whatever reason (and even if japan was not direclty related to the troubles) if anything happens with China , Russia or in the Middle east, bye bye Oil or Gas and this time no “setsuden” will do.

Being that much irresponsible in matter of energy policy is the real trouble here, and the Media should have done their job and cover those issues before. (breaking news)

Now, things have changed, new technologies are more available (solar, geothermal…)
The shift to new energies has to be push by the medias, embraced by the public , then lead by the politicians (yeah right…) to make it a national priority.
It will then open new opportunities: better energy autonomy and potential economical gain. Japan is one of the best place in the world to put those new energies to the test, improve the efficiency, then put it proudly on the market.

That would be a bold step toward a better future, it could even benefit the entire world… that may sound utopian, but i would rather see salarymen working their ass off to make THAT happen

Then says: “I carefully avoid attacking Debito’s character.”

Okay, whatever.

I think it’s time to close out comments on this thread. I don’t have anything to add to what I’ve already stated. I’m sure anyone who by some chance stumbles across this conversation can decide for themselves what to think …

→My claim is that the blog with its posts and the way he runs it is unfair, misleading, misinforming, racist, extremist.

Perhaps you aren’t doing this as much as as as 空 or Level3

I carefully avoid attacking Debito’s character.
I want to focus upon the posts, the comments included, and the way he runs the blog.

However, I don’t regard this as censorship

I am not talking about censorship. I don’t regard it as censorship either. I want to reserve the word for the restriction by government.

But the point is whether LB’s comment is blocked because the comment is racist— the the reason you cited for Debito to block the comments.

As a side LB’s comment is the correct interpretation of the Japanese cited, and Debito’s is wrong.

In other words, people have a right to speech.

So far I agree with you.(though you sometimes sound like saying we should not pay attention to his blog.)

That does not mean the blog in question is not unfair, misleading, misinforming, racist, extremist.

My claim is that the blog with its posts and the way he runs it is not fair, misleading, misinforming, racist, extremist.

I think I have given examples and reasons why it is.
I can give you more if you like.

All you have said is you personally find some discussions on debito org interesting and useful. That does not refute my claim. The question is not whether you personally find it interesting, useful, but the question is whether blog is not unfair, misleading, misinforming, racist. You have not answered the question.