Big on Japan

Bet on Japan.

The earthquake and tsunami and nuclear scare were shocking and emotionally dramatic.

But as the surprise of those events fades away, the salient characteristic of the story must be the stoicism of the Japanese people in the face of tragedy, and their determination to rebuild.

Contrast that with the looting and lawlessness in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Japan will be rebuilt first.

Warren Buffett, the legendary investor, says now is the time to buy, not sell, Japanese businesses. He’s not a vulture — vultures don’t come to help the wounded with money. Vulture might better describe some of the shrieking journalists who lustfully compare Japan’s nuclear reactors to Chernobyl. They wish.

The latest damage estimate is $300 billion, which sounds like a lot. But if that’s completely paid off in just five years, that’s less than 1% of Japan’s GDP. Given that most construction is paid off over decades through mortgages, the $300 billion is a blip.

For comparison, the U.S. government’s bailout of insurance giant AIG cost $162 billion. Add in U.S. mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and you’re well

over $300 billion.

What’s remarkable about this month’s Japanese calamities is how few people were actually killed. Ten thousand are dead and 17,000 are missing — a tragic loss. But compare that to another earthquake in Japan in 1923 that killed more than 100,000 people.

This month’s quake was more than 10 times as powerful, but a combination of better construction methods and better emergency response saved lives.

Japan’s earthquake was the fifth largest ever recorded, a startling 9.0 on the Richter scale — where each number is 10 times more powerful than the previous number. A 10.0 earthquake has never been recorded.

This is very encouraging — and it’s a testament to human achievement.

Saturday was so-called Earth Hour, a publicity stunt created by the World Wildlife Fund where enthusiasts were supposed to stop using electricity for an hour. Only a rich, luxuriant society would fetishize poverty and want. Japan is still rebuilding; there are still parts of that country where electricity is not back on. They are in a permanent state of Earth Hour deprivation — not as some fashion statement but because of a tragedy. How is that state of despair a morally commendable situation?

It was human development, industry, capitalism, electricity — and in Japan’s case, safe nuclear power — that has made the difference between their more modest death toll and the 230,000 who died in Indonesia’s earthquake and tsunami in 2004, or the 220,000 who died last year in Haiti. Haiti’s earthquake was less than 1% as powerful; it was their lack of industrial development that made it so deadly.

Is that really the state of affairs we want to be worshipped on Earth Day? For centuries, guilty, rich, white liberals have professed their admiration for the “noble savage” — an unspoiled man, typically in a pre-industrial civilization, not yet spoiled by our modern ways or troubles.

It’s a fantasy, it’s condescending, it’s political psychotherapy for the idle rich who feel guilty about how easy their own lives are, and who are clearly looking for some spiritual meaning they themselves lack. But in a world where there are enough natural threats to man’s happiness and longevity, fetishizing primitive economies is a suicidal fetish.

Japan will rise again — over the objections of those who would sentence it to a nuclear-free, industry-free, permanent Earth Day.