Contrary to recent propaganda efforts, Hydro-electric generation is not and cannot be, green. In fact it is nowhere near green. Additionally, climate breakdown is not the only deadly problem we face. The loss of life on Earth, in terms of quantity and biodiversity, will be equally, or more, devastating. Both are symptoms of human overshoot, the real problem which must be addressed if life is to survive.I discuss briefly below approximately thirty reasons Green-Hydro is a lie; read on.
Dams always flood the most productive, from Nature’s viewpoint, lands, that is the low, riparian land surrounding a river. This is a disaster for life and therefore biodiversity. People, too, are displaced, but, IMO, this is a lesser problem as they can live anywhere while the riparian creatures can live only there.
Dams, including weirs (for the falsely so-called ‘run of river’ projects) fragment rivers and prevent migration, both local and from the oceans. Local fish movement is blocked; for instance, in the previously proposed Nanakan River project, a weir would have extirpated a local population of Lake Sturgeon who migrated seasonally past its proposed location (Lake Sturgeon are notorious for refusing to use fish ladders). In the Ottawa and St Lawrence Rivers, Eels are blocked by dams to the point of extirpation. It used to be that Eels were 50% of the biomass of the rivers they accessed; now there are virtually none. More, the Eels returning to the sea from Ontario were bigger than others and therefore laid many more eggs than those returning from elsewhere, so, maybe, the whole of Eeldom is threatened by Ontario’s dams. Think of how this wrecks biodiversity.
In the west, the forests in valleys that have salmon grow three times faster than those without (P397. Page numbers refer to Bright Green Lies). Bear experts suggest that Grizzly Bear behaviour when fully stuffed with salmon is more benign than when they’re hungry, so how will their behaviour change when the salmon are gone? What will this mean for human/Bear interactions? How will the Orca Pods which eat primarily, or totally, salmon fare when dams have greatly reduced the salmon? (Hint: they are declining rapidly.)
Dams drown rapids; in the Namakan, the only rapids that the Pygmy Snaketail Dragonfly is known to use for breeding in Ontario was to be flooded, and thus would have extirpated this dragonfly.
Reservoirs heat up the water, thus preventing cold water fish from passing and also change the species composition of the river. Additionally, the whole river heats up, to the extent that there is a measurable warm spot in the ocean at its outflow.
More, the biomass covered by the reservoir’s waters rots and produces copious CO2 (1 to 4% of the total)(P385), and in the process bacteria produce methyl mercury which concentrates up the food chain, potentially killing as it goes. The continuous inflow of the river above the dam continues to supply biomass, so the process does not stop. In Algonquin Park, for instance, Lake Louisa’s Lake Trout are poisonous to eat for this reason. Who would have thought that fish in the middle of a great park would be poisonous to eat? Methane, too, is released by reservoirs, Bright Green Lies quotes 23% of total methane. (P385)
Peaking electric production changes water levels rapidly and often, killing insects in various stages of their life cycles. This reduces biodiversity. Conversely, on the whole, dams even out the seasonal flow of rivers. This prevents flooding, which is probably good for humans in the short term, but disastrous for all in terms of biodiversity and land nutrition terms. Wetlands are reduced as are the deltas at the mouth of the river; both of these reductions damage biodiversity.
Damming rivers destroys a major carbon cycle which carries soil and plant matter to be sequestered in the ocean. (P397)
Dams are vulnerable to drought, see the American west for an example today.
Dams are responsible for immense quantities of released CO2 in the materials used for their construction, eg. the steel and the cement.
Hydro-electric development is often located far from where the electricity is needed. The necessary transmission lines cut a huge swath, often for hundreds or thousands of kilometers, through the landscape. This damages biodiversity over huge areas.
Deep Green Lies sums it up succinctly “every dam is a disaster for the real world.” (P394) And “When your primary allegiance lies with industrial civilization and not with life on the planet, it’s easy – and, more to the point, necessary to justify atrocities.” (P397)
As I see it, ‘Green Hydro’ is an effort to deny that the human project must be largely (and savagely) curtailed. Too bad for the deniers, because if we don’t do it voluntarily, Nature will do it anyway and that probably not nearly as nicely to us as we would have done it ourselves, had we not been dissuaded by the deniers.
Industrial society is a large part of the problem; a huge extension of it via ‘Green Hydro’ is one of the things that will guarantee life’s failure.
Why not try something that might work, such as using less, much less?
Ian Whyte
Ottawa, Canada
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