Over at Foreign Policy, Steve LeVine puts the Japanese cataclysms in a larger context and concludes that what we're seeing is
a global energy system under severe stress. Over the last several months, we've learned the hard way in incredibly coincidental events that we are in firm control of almost none of our major sources of power: Deep-water oil drilling can be perilous if the company carrying it out cuts corners. Because of chronically bad governance by petrostates, we can't necessarily rely on OPEC supplies either. Shale gas drilling may result in radioactive contamination of water, though who knows since many of the companies involved seem prepared to risk possible ignominy and lawsuits later rather than proactively straighten out their own bad actors. As for much-promoted nuclear power, we know now that big, perfect-storm, black-swan natural disasters can come in twos.
If these closely grouped events were to be viewed (and discussed) more broadly as a whole, we might see the makings of an actual national conversation on energy.
