Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
own borders. The commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation stated with some con-
fidence in 1994 that “the dam building era in the United States is now over” (qtd. in World-
watch Institute 2001:37). Such a statement underscores the dramatic shift in public values
in the United States, where most citizens and political leaders view hydropower genera-
tion as merely one positive outcome that must be weighed against a host of environmental
and social ills—species loss, biodiversity decline, water-quality degradation, and human
displacement. In many circles, hydrologists and environmental scientists call for managing
the operations of existing dams for “ecological flows,” an approach that balances human
needs against ecological concerns such as fish passage, water quality, and the maintenance
of healthy riparian habitats downstream.
Buttheeulogyforhydropowerwasperhapsabitpremature. Currenteventsmayyetshift
the cost-benefit equation. Climate change, for example, may increase flood risks in some
areas while depleting the natural storage capacity of snowpack in other areas (Nolin and
Daly 2006); as a result, dams may again become a viable water-management tool in places
such as the United States, which has not seen the development of additional hydropower
facilities for many decades. Meanwhile, corporate interests and government factions in the
United States are pursuing every source of hydrocarbons they can get their hands on. The
Keystone XL pipeline, for example, which would transport crude oil from the tar sands of
Alberta, Canada, to refineries in the Midwest and on the Gulf Coast, is in the late stages of
review and permitting. Following the release of a draft EIA in 2013, James Hansen, then
the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the most well-known
scientist in the public debate on global climate change, remarked somberly, “The total car-
bon in tar sands exceeds that in all oil burned in human history” (qtd. in Environmental
News Service 2013). The extraction of crude oil from tar sands represents the turn toward
dirtier fuel sources as the world's proven reserves of petroleum dwindle in our current era
of “peak oil.”
2
All of this is taking place, moreover, amidst growing scientific consensus that average
global surface temperatures are rising above historical norms, that the warming trend is
correlated with anthropogenic carbon emissions, and that catastrophic climatic and weather
events—whichhavebecomealltoocommonplace inrecentyears—arethelikelyresult(In-
tergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007; Marcott et al. 2013). Water scenarios un-
der climate change project retreating glaciers in some areas and less pronounced effects in
others, which leads to questions about the future availability of freshwater in East, South-
east, and South Asian regions—home to about one-quarter of the world's population (U.S.
National Research Council 2012). What are the implications of reduced snow pack in the
Himalayas, often referred to as the “third pole” of the globe because of the sheer volume of
freshwater stored there?
3
At the international scale, various policy initiatives continue to make hydropower an at-
tractive proposition for many governments as well as for private development interests.
