Posted by Jonathan Adler:
Dam Trade-Offs:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_05_27-2007_06_02.shtml#1180564326
The Reason Foundation's [1]Shikha Dalmia challenges environmentalist
calls to remove dams from western rivers. Hydroelectric dams may have
been wasteful and environmentally destructive boondoggles when they
were built, but now that they are in place they provide relatively
cheap electricity without emitting carbon dioxide.
Once regarded as the symbol of national greatness, hydroelectric
dams have now fallen into disrepute for many legitimate reasons.
They are enormously expensive undertakings that would never have
taken off but for hefty government subsidies. Worse, they typically
involve changing the natural course of rivers, causing painful
disruptions for towns and tribes.
But tearing down the Klamath dams, the last of which was completed
in 1962, will do more harm than good at this stage. These dams
provide cheap, renewable energy to 70,000 homes in Oregon and
California. Replacing this energy with natural gas--the cleanest
fossil-fuel source--would still pump 473,000 tons of additional
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. This is roughly
equal to the annual emissions of 102,000 cars.
Given this alternative, one would think that environmentalists
would form a human shield around the dams to protect them. Instead,
they have been fighting tooth-and-nail to tear them down because
the dams stand in the way of migrating salmon. Environmentalists
don't even let many states, including California, count hydro as
renewable.
Yet hydro is not the only power that some environmentalists oppose.
Nearly every viable alternative energy source has provoked some amount
of environmentalist opposition.
Their opposition to nuclear energy is well known. Wind power? Two
years ago the Center for Biological Diversity sued California's
Altamont Pass Wind Farm for obstructing and shredding migrating
birds. ("Cuisinarts of the sky" is what many greens call wind
farms.) Solar? Worldwatch Institute's Christopher Flavin has been
decidedly lukewarm about solar farms because they involve placing
acres of mirrors in pristine desert habitat. The Sierra Club and
Wilderness Society once testified before Congress to keep
California's Mojave Desert--one of the prime solar sites in the
country--off limits to all development. Geothermal energy? They are
unlikely to get enviro blessings, because some of the best sites
are located on protected federal lands.
What to do? No source of energy is perfect; all involve trade-offs.
Some like to think conservation is the cure, but marginal reductions
in energy use will only do so much. If global warming is the greatest
environmental threat, then it may be worth enduring other
environmental impacts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In a world
of infinite trade-offs, we can only do so much.
References
1. http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110010142
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