Down With The Cities | Page 7

do not cover them with concrete and fill the littoral areas with garbage, there is no need to go far out to sea to fish, thereby being a nuisance to other countries.
Japan's deep sea fishing industry, for example, has taken too many shrimp near Indonesia, and in order to get 8,000 tons of shrimp, once discarded 70,000 tons of fish (according to an Asahi Shimbun feature entitled "Food"). Extravagant city dwellers will pay high prices for shrimp, but they will not pay much for other marine foods, and since the fishermen cannot make money by offering ordinary fish, all the dead ones are thrown back into the sea after sorting. Such fish are a precious source of protein for the people of Indonesia.
Thus the egomaniacal cities waste 70,000 tons of fish so that they can gorge themselves on shrimp (I will answer later to the charge that people in the country eat shrimp, too). And what is more, they so recklessly take shrimp that the shrimp are now in danger of running out. Just as with the forests, Indonesia's fish crisis is intimately connected with our cities' appetite.
Evil Seven
The seventh evil is the copious consumption of resources and energy. The functions of the cities are supported by vast quantities of energy and underground resources. Almost all these resources are used to maintain the extravagance and convenience of the cities (like elevators, automatic doors, neon signs, transportation systems, heating, and air conditioning), and to make idiotic trinkets and gewgaws (like cars, cameras, televisions, and robots). The cities (industries) are built on the assumption that petroleum and metals will be supplied forever, and in unlimited quantities. However, it should be manifest even to a little child that such things are limited, and what remains dwindles day by day.
The incredible fight over, and waste of, resources is an indication, along with the pursuit of profit inherent in a money economy, of the competitive ideology of the city mind. Modern urban civilization -- that is, the extravagance and prosperity of the cities -- is a fruitless blossom fed by this waste of energy and underground resources.
Evil Eight
The eighth evil is the excessive consumption of oxygen and water.
The consumption of oxygen is just as I noted in the section on forests (Evil One). Were it not for oxygen, even the convenient energy provided by petroleum would not be available. Oxygen is the most important thing in maintaining the functions of the cities, and they consume it with wild abandon. Oxygen decreases minute by minute, so that in time we too might not have enough to breathe (it is said that in one minute a jet consumes as much oxygen as a human being consumes in a year).
The cities also think nothing of wasting water for convenience and money-making, for their flush toilets and their factories. The cities take water from others by force, and then dump their wastes everywhere.
Evil Nine
The ninth evil is the way the city forces sacrifices on others so it can obtain electricity and water.
The egotism of the city is more than apparent in its method of obtaining electricity and water. We all remember when Tokyoites insisted that, in order that they could live a convenient, pleasant life, it was only natural that the village of Okawachi sink beneath the waters of a dam reservoir. In this way the farmers of the village were turned out of the place that had been their home for generations, while the citizens of Tokyo, in their pursuit of convenience, extravagance, and ease (not to mention money-making), never even looked back. And the tragedy of such obscure villages is just like that of the villages ruined by nuclear power. Why don't the cities build their nuclear reactors right in the middle of the cities? Why don't they build them in one of their seaside industrial zones? If city residents do not have enough water for their flush toilets or electricity for their automatic doors (though I would expect they too have hands with which to open doors), they should leave the cities.
The Evils of Urban Wastes
The preceding nine sections are an outline of the plundering, destructive acts that the cities must perpetrate in order to maintain themselves.
Now, having consumed all of these plundered resources, the cities are left with wastes -- both industrial and human -- and they then proceed to dump them on others, all the while thinking it a perfectly natural thing to do. No matter that the cities have been so devilishly clever in devising a civilization built on all manner of amazing apparatuses -- the law of conservation of matter guarantees that they cannot do away with their garbage by sleight of hand.
Let us now list and examine the various evils of the cities as represented by their wastes.
1. Carbon Dioxide
The first