Nuclear power fails the safety test for U.S.

Pity President Obama: Every time he tries to compromise with Republicans on energy reform by backing dirty or dangerous forms of power generation, a disaster occurs to demonstrate why pursuing such strategies is a bad idea. It happened a year ago when a BP oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico after Obama had been talking up the advantages of expanded offshore drilling, and it’s happening again t

March 17, 2011

Don’t blame nature; we need to live responsibly

The New York Times characterizes the tsunami that struck coastal Japan as “murderous,” while a friend writes that “Planet Earth is an unfriendly place.” I rode out the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in my seventh-floor apartment in San Francisco, which experience instilled in me an appropriate terror and respect for the fluidity of so-called terra firma. The epicenter of that 6.1 earthquake was locat

March 17, 2011

[William Pesek] Dogs show how earthquake will bring us closer

Japan’s domestic nuclear crisis is going global in a hurry.Just ask Christine Lagarde, France’s finance minister, who wants to convene Group of Seven talks on a response to Japan’s earthquake. “I’ve asked for a G7 meeting at the level of finance ministers and central bankers to see how we can purchase their bonds and how to respond on the financial level,” she said.The internationalization of this

March 17, 2011

Keep Gaeseong goods out of S. Korea-U.S. FTA

Supporters of the proposed free-trade agreement between the United States and South Korea argue that we should approve the pact to improve our economy and to reward an ally in a troubled region for its strong security relationship with the United States, and to solidify these strong security ties with a stronger trade relationship. Though there is no doubt South Korea is a close ally, we need to e

March 17, 2011

Read this column, or Big Bird takes a bullet

A famous 1973 cover of National Lampoon showed a dog with a revolver held to its head, with the caption, “If you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll kill this dog.” To hear defenders of publicly subsidized media, Republican efforts to cut funding to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System puts a gun to the head of Big Bird. That doesn’t have to be the case. The Corporation for Public B

March 16, 2011

Japan crisis raises concerns over nuclear plants

The 9.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Japan’s northeastern coast on Friday (March 11) ― the fourth largest in the world since 1900 ― has dwarfed all other headlines. The ensuing 23-foot tsunami traveled miles inland before receding and leaving in its wake a swampy wasteland of debris, buildings set ablaze and over 120 aftershocks.The disaster was brought to the global consciousness through bird

March 16, 2011

[Albert R. Hunt] Trickle-down misperceptions muddle debt debate

The American comic strip Pogo once famously noted, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” This may be the best way to describe the current fracas in Washington over the deficit.Politicians of both parties have done a poor job of educating the public, and voters are sending conflicting, and in some cases, misguided, messages.A Bloomberg National Poll published last week, in line with other surveys,

March 16, 2011

[Caroline Baum] Earthquakes don’t add to wealth of nations

It takes a crisis, such as the financial meltdown in 2008, to rally support for a Keynesian style fiscal stimulus.It takes another kind of crisis, specifically the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the northeastern coast of Japan last week, to expose the Keynesian fallacy that the government can spend its way to prosperity.For that reason, Acts of God provide a teaching moment. They make the

March 16, 2011

Japan’s nuclear power plants in disarray

Damage beyond imagination is unfolding in the wake of the massive earthquake that hit Japan on March 11. More than 5,000 people are confirmed dead or missing, and the death toll is expected to reach into the tens of thousands. In the Miyagi Prefecture town of Minami Sanriku alone, around 10,000 people are unaccounted for.The quake, whose magnitude was upgraded by the Meteorological Agency from the

March 15, 2011

[Martin Khor] Calamities raise global concerns

The devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan last Friday (March 11) have highlighted many important issues for every country.In 2010, there was the disastrous earthquake in Haiti which killed an estimated 223,000 people and made two million homeless.Earthquakes also occurred in Chile and China (April), Sumatra (April and October, accompanied by a tsunami that killed hundreds) and Iran (December

March 15, 2011

[Amity Shlaes] Four ways the U.S. can help Japan, also itself

How can we help?That’s the first question that comes to American minds as the size and scope of Japan’s disaster unfolds. Click on PayPal to send money for emergency shelters. Sponsor a child from Sendai. Encourage General Electric Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt to send nuclear engineers.This week of horror has generated record good will in the U.S. toward Japan.There is a way the U.S. can help. O

March 15, 2011

[William Pesek] Roubini quake gloom meets ‘shock doctrine’

It always struck me as odd that Japanese bookstores have not just earthquake sections, but entire aisles of titles devoted to tectonic upheavals. After Friday’s big one, I’m now a believer in quake-olgy. Temblors have a complicated place in the Japanese psyche. There’s a widely held belief, a local mythology, that tectonic-plate shifts can coincide with big ones above the ground, too. An 1855 eart

March 15, 2011

Make no mistakes handling nuclear accident

The horrible damage caused by the massive earthquake that struck a wide area of eastern Japan on Friday has gradually become clear.Coastal cities and towns in three prefectures in the Tohoku region ― Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima ― have been devastated. Large tsunamis struck only minutes to several dozen minutes after the Tohoku Pacific Offshore Earthquake occurred, washing away houses and automobil

March 14, 2011

[Doyle McManus] One step at a time on Libya

The debate over Libya this week in Washington isn’t about what the U.S. goal should be. President Obama settled that question last week when he declared: “It’s time for Gadhafi to go.” He’s reaffirmed that message several times, and leaders of the most important U.S. allies in Europe ― Britain, Germany and France ― have made similar statements.Instead, the question is what role the United States a

March 14, 2011