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<p><b><font size=5 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:18.0pt;
font-weight:bold'>Dam the Salmon </span></font></b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Shikha
Dalmia.<br>
Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition).<br>
May 30, 2007. pg. A.19 <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Al Gore
has been hectoring Americans to pare back their lifestyles to fight global
warming. But if Mr. Gore wants us to rethink our priorities in the face of this
mother of all environmental threats, surely he has convinced his fellow greens
to rethink theirs, right? <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Wrong. If
their opposition to the Klamath hydroelectric dams in the Pacific Northwest is
any indication, the greens, it appears, are just as unwilling to sacrifice
their pet causes as a Texas rancher is to sacrifice his pickup truck. If
anything, the radicalization of the environmental movement is the bigger
obstacle to addressing global warming than the allegedly gluttonous American
way of life. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Once
regarded as the symbol of national greatness, hydroelectric dams have now
fallen into disrepute for many legitimate reasons. They are enormously
expensive undertakings that would never have taken off but for hefty government
subsidies. Worse, they typically involve changing the natural course of rivers,
causing painful disruptions for towns and tribes. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>But
tearing down the Klamath dams, the last of which was completed in 1962, will do
more harm than good at this stage. These dams provide cheap, renewable energy
to 70,000 homes in <st1:State w:st="on">Oregon</st1:State> and <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:State w:st="on">California</st1:State></st1:place>. Replacing
this energy with natural gas -- the cleanest fossil-fuel source -- would still
pump 473,000 tons of additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year.
This is roughly equal to the annual emissions of 102,000 cars. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Given
this alternative, one would think that environmentalists would form a human
shield around the dams to protect them. Instead, they have been fighting
tooth-and-nail to tear them down because the dams stand in the way of migrating
salmon. Environmentalists don't even let many states, including <st1:State
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:State>, count hydro
as renewable. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>They have
rejected all attempts by PacifiCorp, the company that owns the dams, to take
mitigation steps such as installing $350 million fish ladders to create a
salmon pathway. Klamath Riverkeeper, a group that is part of an environmental
alliance headed by Robert Kennedy Jr., has sued a fish hatchery that the
California Department of Fish and Wildlife runs -- and PacifiCorp is required
to fund -- on grounds that it releases too many algae and toxic discharges. The
hatchery produces at least 25% of the chinook salmon catch every year. Closing
it will cause fish populations to drop further, making the demolition of the
dams even more likely. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>But the
end of the Klamath won't mean the end of the dam saga -- it is the big prize
that environmentalists are coveting to take their antidam crusade to the next
level. "This would represent the largest and most ambitious dam removal
project in the country, if not the world," exults Steve Rothert of
American Rivers. The other dams on the hit list include the O'Shaughnessy Dam
in Yosemite's <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Hetch</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceName
w:st="on">Hetchy</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">Valley</st1:PlaceType>
that services <st1:City w:st="on">San Francisco</st1:City>, <st1:PlaceName
w:st="on">Elwha</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">River</st1:PlaceType>
dam in Washington and the Matilija Dam in <st1:place w:st="on">Southern
California</st1:place>. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Large
hydro dams supply about 20% of <st1:State w:st="on">California</st1:State>'s
power (and 10% of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s).
If they are destroyed, <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:State>
won't just have to find some other way to fulfill its energy needs. It will
have to do so while reducing its carbon footprint to meet the ambitious CO2
emission-reduction targets that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has set. Mr.
Schwarzenegger has committed the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Golden</st1:PlaceName>
<st1:PlaceType w:st="on">State</st1:PlaceType></st1:place> to cutting
greenhouse gas emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 -- a more stringent
requirement than even in the Kyoto Protocol. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
effect this might have on <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:State>'s
erratic and overpriced energy supply has businesses running scared. Mike
Naumes, owner of Naumes Inc., a fruit packing and processing business, last
year moved his juice concentrate plant from <st1:City w:st="on">Marysville</st1:City>,
<st1:State w:st="on">Calif.</st1:State>, to <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Washington</st1:place></st1:State> state and cut his energy bill in
half. With hydropower under attack, he is considering shrinking his farming
operations in the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Golden</st1:PlaceName>
<st1:PlaceType w:st="on">State</st1:PlaceType></st1:place> as well. "We
can't pay exorbitant energy prices and stay competitive with overseas
businesses," he says. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Bruce
Hamilton, Sierra Club's deputy executive director and a longtime proponent of
such a mandate, refuses to even acknowledge that there is any conflict in
closing hydro dams while fighting global warming. All <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:State> needs to do to square these twin
objectives, he maintains, is become more energy efficient while embracing
alternative fuels. "We don't need to accept a Faustian bargain with
hydropower to cut emissions," he says. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>This is
easier done in the fantasy world of greens than in the real world. If
cost-effective technologies to boost energy efficiency actually existed,
industry would adopt them automatically, global warming or not.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>As for
alternative fuels, they are still far from economically viable. Gilbert
Metcalf, an economist at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Tufts</st1:PlaceName>
<st1:PlaceType w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>, has
calculated that wind energy costs 6.64 cents per kWh and biomass 5.95 kWh --
compared to 4.37 cents for clean coal. Robert Bradley Jr., president of the
Institute for Energy Research, puts these costs even higher. "Although
technological advances have lowered alternative fuel prices in recent years,
these fuels still by and large cost twice as much as conventional fossil
fuels," he says. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>But
suppose these differentials disappeared. Would the Sierra Club and its
eco-warriors actually embrace the fuels that Mr. Hamilton advocates? Not if
their track record is any indication. Indeed, environmental groups have a
history of opposing just about every energy source. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Their
opposition to nuclear energy is well known. Wind power? Two years ago the
Center for Biological Diversity sued <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">California</st1:place></st1:State>'s
Altamont Pass Wind Farm for obstructing and shredding migrating birds.
("Cuisinarts of the sky" is what many greens call wind farms.) Solar?
Worldwatch Institute's Christopher Flavin has been decidedly lukewarm about
solar farms because they involve placing acres of mirrors in pristine desert
habitat. The Sierra Club and Wilderness Society once testified before Congress
to keep <st1:State w:st="on">California</st1:State>'s <st1:place w:st="on">Mojave
Desert</st1:place> -- one of the prime solar sites in the country -- off
limits to all development. Geothermal energy? They are unlikely to get enviro
blessings, because some of the best sites are located on protected federal
lands. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Greens,
it seems, always manage to find a problem for every environmental solution --
and there is deep reason for this.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Since its
inception, the American environmental movement has been torn between
"conservationists" seeking to protect nature for man -- and
"preservationists" seeking to protect nature for its own sake.
Although early environmental thinkers such as Aldo Leopold and John Muir were
sympathetic to both themes, Leopold was more in the first camp and Muir in the
second. Leopold regarded wilderness as a form of land use; he certainly wanted
to limit the development of wild areas -- but to "enlarge the range of
individual experience." Muir, on the other hand, saw wilderness as sacred
territory worthy of protection regardless of human needs. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>With the
arrival on the scene of Deep Ecologists from <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>
in the 1980s, Muir's mystical preservationist side won the moral high ground.
The emphasis of Deep Ecology on radical species equality made talk about
solving environmental problems for human ends illicit within the American
environmental community. Instead, Arne Naess, the revered founder of Deep
Ecology, explicitly identified human beings as the big environmental problem.
"The flourishing of nonhuman life requires a decrease in human
population," his eight-point platform to save Mother Earth serenely
declared. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>This
ideological turn, notes Ramachandra Guha, a left-leaning Indian commentator and
incisive critic of Deep Ecology, has made American environmentalism irrelevant
at best and dangerous at worst for the Third World, where addressing
environmental issues such as soil erosion, water pollution and deforestation
still remains squarely about serving human needs. By turning wilderness
preservation into a moral absolute -- as opposed to simply another form of land
use -- Deep Ecology has justified wresting crucial resources out of the hands
of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s
agrarian and tribal populations. "Specious nonsense about equal rights of
all species cannot hide the plain fact that green imperialists . . . are
dangerous," Mr. Guha has written. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Besides
hurting the <st1:place w:st="on">Third World</st1:place>, such radicalism had
made the environmental movement incapable of responding to its own self-
proclaimed challenges. Since nature can't speak for itself, the admonition to
protect nature for nature's sake offers not a guide to action, but an
invitation to inaction. That's because a non- anthropocentric view that treats
nature as non-hierarchical collapses into incoherence when it becomes necessary
to calculate trade-offs or set priorities between competing environmental
goals. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Thus,
even in the face of a supposedly calamitous threat like global warming,
environmentalists can't bring themselves to embrace any sacrifice -- of salmons
or birds or desert or protected wilderness. Its strategy comes down to pure
obstructionism -- on full display in the Klamath dam controversy. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Yet, if
environmentalists themselves are unwilling to give up anything for global
warming, how can they expect sacrifices from others? If Al Gore wants to do
something, he should first move out of his 6,000 square-foot <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Nashville</st1:place></st1:City> mansion and then make a movie
titled: "Damn the salmon." <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>---<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Ms.
Dalmia is a senior analyst with Reason Foundation<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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