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June 29, 2013

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I've not been especially happy with dam projects for a long time. As with nuke plants in the current socio-economic polity, they're built according to the needs of national and geopolitical insiders, and not built safely, on budget, or much of anything else.

Although, I really have to blame the current set of incentives. Absolutely everything these days is done with a mind towards speculative land (and easy extraction like mountaintop removal, valuable timber, etc) plays. Oil palm plantations, fracking, most of the real money has to do with a) getting cheap land b) getting subsidies for basically doing nothing c) removing legal and regulatory barriers that have substantial support within gov't and public, because they prevent the profitable externalization of costs.

It's crazy out there. Fit for crazies of all types, environmentals as well...

A lot of people don't like dams. And there are problems with dams: it isn't entirely clear that the Belo Monte project in Brazil will be better than, say, natural gas plants. Stagnant reservoirs in the tropics can fill with dead plants, which release methane as they decompose. (Scroll to the last page of this document: http://www.climatecollective.org/media/uploads/resources/dirtyhydro.pdf.)

But ... there is always a but ... this does not apply to temperate zone dams. And it does not apply to dams that already exist. It especially does not apply to temperate zone dams that already exist. Like the ones in, well, Quebec.

So I am livid at opponents of this power line. They are as bad the Koch brothers. And hypocritical and sanctimonious to boot.

No disagreements about the enviros. The whole thing about them actually buying the land to stop the distribution project triggered the outburst...

Ain't about any sense, just control the resources and you can be crazy as you wanna be.

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