I recently came to know about dams affecting our ecological system. We think that by building dams we can reduce the use of fossil fuels. Yes, it is true that we are producing hydro electricity, but there are other bigger problems that are created by building bigger and bigger dams. We are not only damaging the ecological system of rivers but we are also damaging the land around the dams.
When 1964 American Nobel Prizing-winning physicist Charles Townes down-played his break-out laser technology with reporters he demurred, "When I hear that kind of thing, it reminds me of what the beaver told the rabbit as they stood at the base of Hoover Dam: 'No, I didn't build it myself, but it's based on an idea of mine.'"
In the 1960's, the age without limits, this telling remark reflects how little was known and understood about the natural world and the accumulative impacts of dams. Since the idea of the beaver wasn't to dam major rivers but build small organic dams on its many tributaries. And then these temporary ecosystems evolved and produced abundant life. They reduced flooding and erosion, enhanced groundwater penetration, created the valley's precious topsoil and fed a radiant food web including decomposing bacteria, amphibians, fisheries, insects, birds, herbivores and carnivores. Comparing a beaver to Hoover Dam is like comparing life to death. Aldo Leopold, the legendary and visionary U.S. Forest Service land manager of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s said dams make the land sick and provide only a temporary prosperity followed by tremendous vulnerability. This ecological reality is incontrovertible - all dams have an end date.
California leads the list with dams near self-cancellation. Within the next generation, 85 percent of all U.S. dams will have degenerated to the point of exhausting their operational lifespan of fifty years requiring decommissioning or massive repairs and upgrades. Now consider that every sweet spot in every geologically sane canyon that might reasonably hold a dam already has an aging dam, what then?
Let's pause for just a moment and ask some relevant questions. What will it cost to maintain, repair, upgrade, and build new dams to replace those that fail or are decommissioned, and restore dysfunctional watersheds impacted by dams? Let me proffer a worldwide estimate to maintain the current population of 6.7 billion without any further additions.
Factoring ecological restoration, maintenance, repair, decommissioning, and replacement cost of the world's developed water infrastructure as it's currently engineered would likely be a cost greater than all the energy expended on all engineering projects from the beginning of civilization and this cost would recur every fifty years or so. Now factor in a population adding 1 billion every thirteen years?
Is it even possible at this stage of civilization to convince people to care about a time on earth that many will not have to live in?
These statistics and trajectories have no caution value to a species front-row seated as the primary agent of geologic change on Earth. For example, in three long lifespans, Europeans have altered a continuous American wilderness into a networked, layered, and interwoven mass of asphalt-spreading, carbon-coughing, concrete-lining, pipeshed-connecting, aqueduct-flowing, levee-bunkering, grid-generating, wireless-transmitting, urban-sprawling, mall-cloning, river-damming, and resource-consuming experiment in human unconsciousness.
Dams provide that tempting illusion of prosperity whose short-term gains literally vandalize the future of civilization and natural terrestrial and aquatic biodiversity. This reality remains an abstraction to a developed and developing world breast-fed on cheap energy, cheap water, and unconscious consumption of finite resources.
The tenant of the economic element states clearly that the natural state of soil, rainfall, creeks and streams, forests, valleys, wetlands, deserts, mountains, etc. have no intrinsic value in and of themselves. And only those aspects that can be justified as an economic benefit to mankind first (logging, mining, damming, intensive agricultural production, urban development, or recreation) are redeemable and can be supported in so far as they produce artificial wealth through income generation. Commodification of elements cycling and recycling from the basement of time, as its sole recognized value displays an arrogance not intended by nature or nature's god.
If the current growing population of 6.7 billion is considered a benefit to mankind, than dams are beneficial. If the vulnerability of dense populations downstream of dams is a benefit to mankind, than dams are beneficial. If agricultural production on arid lands that require large volumes of water that salinate the soil and demand large inputs of fossil-fuel based fertilizers and pesticides that runoff and pollute groundwater is considered a benefit to mankind, than dams are beneficial. If the displacement of 80 million people from their homelands to accommodate dams is a benefit to mankind, than dams are beneficial. If the destruction of life-supporting ecosystems and fishery resources is a benefit to mankind, than dams are beneficial. If the inequitable sharing of benefits and costs is a benefit to mankind, than dams are beneficial. If debt burden, cost overruns, deferred maintenance costs and the impoverishment of people is a benefit to mankind, than dams are the most beneficial engineering endeavor of human history second only to nuclear weapons. If that's the guess then God help us, because common sense hasn't.
http://www.truthout.org/article/we-pay-price-decades-relentless-dam-building
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