By Ace Hoffman

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The total volume of the earth is about 260,000,000,000 (260 billion) cubic miles.

The oceans are about 320,000,000 (320 million) cubic miles (average depth: about two miles). Thus, oceans comprise just over one tenth of one percent of the total volume of Earth (not counting our atmosphere), all of it very close to Earth's surface (maximum depth of the oceans: Just under seven miles).

The oceans contain about 97% of all the water on earth.  Ice caps and ground water are most of the rest.

Fresh water rivers, lakes and streams amount to less than 1% of all the water on Earth.

All water is precious.

There are about 139,400,000 square miles of oceans on earth, and about 57,500,000 square miles of land area. A lot of Fukushima's radiation is now becoming fallout all over the earth, and will be in our environment for thousands of years:  Plutonium, uranium, cesium, strontium, iodine, technetium, tritium... you-name-it, it's radioactive and has been released at Fukushima.

Only a tiny fraction of the total volume of the earth is ever used by humans. Everything's within a few feet, or a few hundred feet, of the surface, except for a few slightly deeper things such as mines, wells, and submarines. Virtually all the subways, sewers, building foundations, electric and data cabling, gas pipelines, and so on are closer to the surface than that. No living quarters, schools or factories are built deep underground under normal circumstances. Some crazy military projects maybe, but that's about it.

So we need to protect this fragile surface!  We aren't doing a very good job.The nuclear industry's constant release of radioactive isotopes into the environment lays down a patina of poison which damages all living things.

We have scorned and scorched our mother earth! She's hot! We irradiated her!

We defiled her. We challenged her. We lost, of course. Now we suffer, and all her other beautiful creatures suffer, and once again, an enormous area has been created where no one can ever live again.

Birds fly in. Birds eat radioactive insects, rodents, reptiles -- many of which can survive much higher doses of radiation than the birds can. ("Yummm! Cockroaches! Get you fill at the abandoned diner in Fukushima!" yells one crow to another.)

In 20 years, maybe in 10, someone will go into the Fukushima exclusion zone, as they do around Chernobyl now, and take pictures and count animals per square mile, and pronounce the area a "thriving" wildlife sanctuary. They'll go in with rose-colored glasses about radiation's effects (or they wouldn't go in at all!) and they won't remove the glasses no matter what they see.

When an animal slows down because it gets cancer, does it get health care?

Of course not!  It gets eaten!

(The cancerous part is sometimes avoided by the more delicate carnivores.)

Nothing to see.

3-legged ponies won't survive long in the wild.

Nothing to see.

The rose bush in my backyard produces many different colors of roses. Is that caused by its DNA constantly being damaged by radiation? No, that's just the type of rosebush it is.

There's variation everywhere. But what "produces" evolution is NOT random damage to our DNA!  It's the semi-random joining of two DNA strands together in new sequences which produce all the variation we need in life.  Why muck with such an exquisite system?  The other method might work occasionally, but usually it just produces deformities, cancer, and pain.

Those who go into the "forbidden zones" see what they want to see.

So here's to Mother Earth.

There are 440 other Fukushimas waiting to happen (plus another thousand or so military reactors).

Earth day is a sham.  A mockery.  A sin.  If we each devote only one day a year to saving Mother Earth, well then, as we can see, she doesn't stand a chance.