Out here, amongst the stars and the waves, with birds curving across the sunrise, with flying fish and dolphins bursting out of the sea to greet us, I feel very close to nature. We have no internet to bring us news of the world but rely on our weather fax to tell us what to expect in our world. For over a month now, the weather fax of the north east pacific has a box containing the following warning -

"USCG recommends vessels avoid transit within 43 NM of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant (37.15N 141.01E). This recommendation is considered a minimum distance."

From out here, I find it hard not to feel indignant about man's degradation of the planet.

Before we left, I was reading the news from Japan, telling the various methods they are employing to try to stop the leaking radiation and regain control of the exposed nuclear fuel supply. The radiation levels emitted in one hour there are 100 times the annual maximum. Unprotected exposure for 4 hours means a 50% chance of death within a month. I can't help thinking this is only one of 54 nuclear power plants in Japan alone. Where do we think we can store so much radioactive waste for the 26,000 years it will take to become non-toxic? And what about China's plan to build 30 new plants by 2020? I hope their quality controls are better for this project than what we have seen from goods produced by this country recently. At least the Italians seem to have some sense in that they have placed a moratorium on their own nuclear energy industry.

The loss of power from this single plant is forcing power cutbacks in Japan. And from my 'off the grid' existence I wonder what would happen if everyone cut back on personal power usage, and consumption of things that take power to produce. A particularly poignant photo, I thought, showed a worker lugging an old computer to a dump piled high with a mountain of electronics. I wonder how much power the computers of the world have chewed through, just to end up in this dump. Many idly drain their wall sockets just sitting there on the desk, not a human in sight. Ironically, this technology allows me to publish this update from the middle of the ocean.

The debate about how to provide power in the future is only a band-aid solution as long as we continue to squander the world's resources with such disregard. Or perhaps Mother Nature is already taking her revenge.

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