So you thought I was done talking about the river, didn't you?

No, I thought I'd say a bit more. You see, the combination of hydrological engineering, the development of Germany's coal industry, industrialization and its ensuing influx of pollutants into the river... all these things combined to cause the near collapse of the river's natural ecosystem. The ecosystem is important, and not just for people who like to wax on about environmental purity and other quixotic notions.

The fish in the river provided a livlihood for many people-- some of these families had been fishermen for hundreds of years, and now their fish were disappearing. People had always relied on the river to take away their waste products, and for the most part it did... it took them downstream, where they affected other cities and people. In time, the pollutants in the river seeped through the groundwater and into the crops, so that the farmers turned out products that were full of poison. Then there are the normal things people like to lament, like the nesting areas for birds and the drop in species diversity, which from a purely humanistic standpoint might not be as important. The poetic or perhaps inherent, philosophical value of these things, if it could be calculated, should perhaps be introduced into the equation, weighted by the number of people who care about them.

Nevertheless, this series of ecological disasters and disasters like them have been cited as reasons against damming and hydrologically modifying other world rivers, such as the Yangtze (the Three Gorges Dam was completed in 2006, though lots of peripheral construction remains to be completed). So what do you think? The Yangtze has long ravaged the valley with unpredictable flooding. There are many problem with navigability that makes the Yangtze a dangerous and unreliable shipping route. With the damming of the Yangtze, the Chinese have displaced over a million people, flooded several cities (including some with ancient burial grounds, relics, and noteable archeological sites). They have also put the Baiji, a nearly blind freshwater dolphin found only in the Yangtze [more] in danger of extinction, as the dam's presence has increased ship traffic, which can kill the dolphin and disturb its prey. There haven't been any sightings of a wild Baiji since 2004. (10 years from the start of the dam project)

In my humble opinion... the Americans and the Europeans have lost sight of their own history in this matter. Too many generations have gone by for them to remember what it was like to live next to a wild, unpredictable river. None of their family members ever died of typhoid, cholera, dysentery, or malaria. Yes, it is a shame that there aren't as many salmon in the rivers of the Pacific Northwest as there used to be. I applaud the efforts working towards a remedy to that problem. But it makes it really hard to work on a problem like that while you are starving, dying, or living in abject poverty. It's much easier when you are independently wealthy and you live in Portland, Oregon.

Think of Africa here. How disasterous would it be for the Africans to drain all the wetlands in Africa? Pretty disasterous. Well... probably not to the many savannah animals that everyone likes so much- they don't live in the swamp, they live in temperate grasslands. But to the "swamp ecosystem", it would be pretty bad. Ok, especially for the mosquitos. And tse-tse flies. And for the flatworms that cause schistosomiasis. Maybe those adorable hippos, the most deadly of all African mammals, would lose a little habitat. Crocodiles, perhaps.

But how much better would it be if you could free sub-saharan Africa from the yoke of the "tropical" diseases?!?! How liberating would it be if you could free China from the ever-present fear of devastating floods? Here's Africa, brimming with natural resources, unable to get them to market because of horrible roads and hippo/crocodile/disease-filled rivers and you're saying, "Here, lads, here's some money. Don't use it for anything useful. Here's a scrap of food, it will last you until the next time we come by with the charity wagon."

How can you sit there in your house on the former flood plain, watching millions of dollars of increased GDP float by you on the Rhine or the Elbe or the Mississippi... sit there with your rivers tamed, dredged, channelized, and dammed, and lecture the rest of the world on the importance of eco-system conservation?!!?

I see what you mean we need to start taking in account what we are doing to the eco system with all of our pollution. We need to start making big changes soon or we will be doomed to extinction.
» catatonicloki on 2007-05-01 07:15:30

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