Environmental activists tend to recognize that climate change is not the only environmental issue.
But the reason that Indian activist opposed the dam was not environment (at most it was a pseudoreason tacked on) but "indigenous privilege". I.e. they wanted special rights of being exempt from resettlement just because they are Indian.
According to the OP, the activist opposed the dam for its direct negative effects on the local environment, not due to climate change.
The only specific effect cited was that the valley would be flooded (duh!) and the inhabitants would have to be resettled, which is standard practice. No word about any significant environmental effect that would justify opposing/blocking the project. Remember, any development will have some environmental footprint - it's all about the extent of the damage compared to the benefits of the project.
So unless the OP can show that the negative effects from the assumed substitution of alternative sources of energy are more than the negative effects of the dam on the local environment, the OP is more evidence of kneejerk pro-jobs reactionary blather than anything else.
No, the burden of proof should be on those claiming significant environmental problems linked with this dam which would offset all the economic and environmental benefits of the project.
And jobs are very important for underdeveloped, impoverished areas. Although I will grant you, jobs are less important if you've just received $175k for opposing development!
New hydroelectric dams, particularly in heavily vegetated areas, are far from carbon neutral. When a valley is flooded by a new dam, the vegetation that is submerged decomposes, producing large quantities of methane, which is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
But that happens only once, as does the CO
2 released during construction of the dam (both from machines and setting of the concrete itself). But afterwards, hydroelectric power plants can generate huge amounts of power with very little ongoing CO
2 emissions. Look at this comparison:
You can see that hydro is much better than coal and gas (obviously) but also beats solar PV and sometimes even wind and nuclear. But even the worst case hydro is still pretty good.
Again, you will find no energy source to be completely non-polluting - that's "rainbows and unicorns" fantasy many environmentalists are guilty off when they are comparing real world technologies with.
They are subject to silting, which means ongoing expense to keep them dredged; they are far from being 'set and forget' renewable power.
What is "set and forget" in the real world anyway? Silting is an engineering problem which would have been part of any planning studies.
Dams are a poor choice for carbon neutral power generation.
They are actually one of the rather good choices.
Particularly in the Andes, where silting is rapid, and earthquakes are common.
Do you have any evidence that Andes are uniquely poorly suited for hydroelectric dams?
Earthquakes and big dams are a very bad combination;
just ask the Chinese.
Really? A dam failure from almost 40 years ago due to a very rare, very strong typhoon (and probably substandard Mao era construction) is your best argument? And note that this particular dam has been rebuilt.
The jobs issue is a total red herring; assuming that the plant is needful, someone, somewhere, will be generating this power for this area, and that will produce jobs - the guys who would have built the dam can build whatever kind of power plant replaces it; and hydroelectric operations typically require fewer staff than most generation options.
But they won't be in that same impoverished area. That Indian activist is harming her own people's economic development.
Of course the religious bullshit is not a good reason not to build the thing; but that doesn't mean that there are not other, very sound, reasons not to do it - and environmental concerns should rightly be high up that list.
But the religious bullshit is what the Reuters article is focusing on together with complaining that some locals would have to be resettled. No word about any environmental damage that would offset the environmental and economic gains from the project.
Presumably, Peru want to get in on the business of supplying power to Brazil, because the Brazillians want power up in the high Amazon - an area where the building of towns, cities and roads is an environmental catastrophe in itself.
Imagine, people want to better and modernize their lives! The horrors!
If limiting the available electrical power in that region - or making it more costly - limits the destruction of the jungle to make room for farms, towns, cities and roads, then that is also a good thing for the environment. Blocking the development may be considered counter-productive if you take a narrow perspective where economic growth is the primary goal of all human endeavour; but it is probably highly effective at achieving the goal of protecting the Amazon from further deforestation - not just in the immediate area of the dam, but in the adjacent parts of Brazil, too.
I think economic development is an overall good. It has to be balanced with other concerns of course but knee jerk anti-development attitude that Indians share with radical environmentalists is ridiculous. It's not just energy projects like dams and Keystone XL/oil sands that ecomentalists and Indians are united in opposition but also much more innocuous projects like an observatory atop Mt. Graham.
Yes, what bibly said. Hydroelectric has a lot of negative environmental aspects.
Is there any large-scale power generation technology that is considered acceptable by radical ecomentalists?
