Earth-friendly pope on the duty to protect the earth –
Francis:
Here we see how environmental deterioration and human and ethical degradation are closely linked. Many people will deny doing anything wrong because distractions constantly dull our consciousness of just how limited and finite our world really is. As a result, “whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule”.
Collapse of Industrial Civilization
As a young boy raised in the rigid catechism of the Catholic Church, I was no stranger to contradiction and non sequitur.
The high, arching vaults of cathedral whose vertical volume is designed to put man in his place among the towering edifice of the saints, the superimposed almost miniature scale of the pews, the oppressive silence of a vast and empty church.
The looming spectacle of towering oak confessionals, hushed inside with heavy curtain, and black, pitch black, it takes a few moments to find the kneeling pad and to position yourself near the thin fabric partition panel, a wooden core perforated with small holes from which movement and shadow emerge.
A rustling ensues and an invisible door slides open, exposing the partition to the priest’s chamber on the other side. You cannot see but you can hear.
The priest speaks in a thick Irish brogue, first in Latin…
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Thanks for posting this. 🙂 The Pope’s letter is also beautiful. If you read any Italian or Spanish read the first page. It is deeper in the originals. All versions are on the Vatican web site. I was really excited by the idea of doing something on this too – he came out against nuclear and especially nuclear waste – but I was too busy trying to calculate the numbers who will die of cancer due to Fukushima food exported without labels under TPP and looking at the US NRC “Radiation Protection” questions. They and the ICRP want pregnant women in radiology and nuclear industry to have their babies irradiated more even after they declare pregnancy. Where are the right to lifers? Current doses of 50 mSv in one year give the workers a 1% exposure induced risk of cancer after 2 years! In utero cancer exposure induced risk starts at 5 to 10 mSv. Also, the cataract damage is visible by 200 mSv. Bringing it down to the 20 mSv per year helps a little bit. They could use eye shields but industry is too cheap. ICRP says 1% cardiovascular and cerebrovascular risk starts at 500 mSv (cumulative) too. They make unemployed people go work at these places as part of welfare to work and part of the post 2008 employment programs. TPP and TISA will make even more unemployed. My food calculations said about 24 mSv per year if all food contaminated at the levels the US gov allows and food amounts eaten. But, it turns out this is an underestimate, because it’s not bone doses for strontium. It also excludes water. I guess no one should be surprised at how much the US gov hate its own people, if you consider its foundation as a colonial settler slave society. More shocking is that Europe hates its people almost as much, but that’s why they deported so many to the Americas and Australia in the first place.
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that pope …. whadda guy!
I really like the essay.
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What’s great is that what he says is supposed to be obeyed. A lot of protestants have come out more strongly against nuclear, etc. but no one has to listen to them. The Japanese Catholic Bishops said clearly no nuclear energy after Fuku.
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Oh, you reminded me! I just read that they were trying to burn off weeds at Rocky Flats nuclear site this year. There were fears of spreading Plutonium in the air. I think they were stopped. BUT, they did burn the weeds off in 1990. So, maybe that was the burn topic or something similar. Someone proposed sending their 900 goats in to eat the weeds. They said they charge $1,000 per day. That’s an interesting business. It’s not nice to make the goats eat radioactive weeds! There’s supposed to be a protected cute jumping mouse there too. Neither radiation nor fire is good for the mice!
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I’d hate to live out that way! Old rad waste all over!
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RADCON 5 St Charles IL.
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Is that down in SW corner near that dump on fire with the rad waste? Near St. Louis?
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No, it’s outside Chicago. But it appears that area often shows really high RADCON readings for some reason. I’m not tech savvy enuf to put links on here…
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There’s a big plant just west of Chicago that is always leaking tritium.
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There’s a massive hill of rad waste outside of Chicago. I think it’s called thorium hill. There were some other things too, I think, but that’s the one I recall. I don’t think they cleaned that one up but some they clean a bit and then make into parks using the excuse that people aren’t there for long.
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Sorry it’s called Mount Thorium. http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/assault-on-mount-thorium/Content?oid=877745
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-01-21/news/ct-met-superfund-cleanup-20120118_1_kress-creek-thorium-cleanup-rare-earths
Oh, yes, there is all of that tritium too like Cuttlefish said. And, Illinois is supposed to have more nuclear waste than anyone – I think they said commercial but they had the lab there – Argonne? One of the power stations was to the southwest, I think.
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Any hope that the Pope will excommunicate Scalia for allowing the mercury to keep dumping into the environment? Scalia’s ruling is really obnoxious. The dissent was better.
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Oh, also in Illinois they were filtering the water for uranium (and possibly other radionuclides) to adhere to Clean Water Act but then allowed them to apply sludge to crops. But, that wouldn’t account for in town, I guess.
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I think Illinois has more nuke plants than any other state ….
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The Site A/Plot M Disposal Site is located within Red Gate Woods and situated on the former grounds of Argonne National Laboratory and its predecessor, the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory in Cook County, Illinois ….
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_A/Plot_M_Disposal_Site
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Thanks.
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other topic …
Windscale disaster
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ENENews/~3/CkSwHRfL4WY/bbc-police-grabbed-people-movie-theatre-made-reactor-deal-burning-fuel-rods-tv-men-picked-streets-forced-battle-nuclear-meltdown-video
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thanks.
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If Hollywood weren’t aturated with CIA embeds and corp. “influence”ers this story would make a great screenplay!
But they don’t make those kind of movies anymore.
[ I read about CIA in Hollywood here-
http://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/book/?GCOI=60239103404240& ]
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They are there too?! I’m still shocked that they were and maybe still are in the New York Times!
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OT/ maybe of interest to you, the convertion about the explosion at Tianjin and gold mining chemicals stored there.
https://flyingcuttlefish.wordpress.com/2015/08/14/tianjin/
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… and –
Illinois: America’s biggest nuclear dump site
The lack of a national waste disposal plan forces states to shoulder the burden of storage
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/28/illinois_americas_biggest_nuclear_dump_site/
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Thanks. Now I recall they were ecstatic to send a lot to Texas as part of their “pact”.
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I got that link from a comment on ENE news…. 😉
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