It used to be that progress was measured by civilization’s control over the evils of Nature. This was not some weird perversion, mind you, but rather a measure of our understanding of the world around us. I recall reading in a school textbook, long ago – someone wake the dude in the corner up, eh? – that riders of the old steam trains would be proud that their clothes were stained with the soot generated by the coal powering their locomotives, because it it was emblematic of the control of civilization over the Nature that so often robbed us of fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers, children, friends, through disease and the other vicissitudes of, well, being alive.
Beats me if it’s actually true, not being a historian, but it makes sense.
These days, I think, we’re in a dispute over the meaning of progress. Some cling to old definitions, such as how high we can build, or build farms, or build dams.
And then there are the new ways of measurement in which we try to comprehend entire natural systems and how to interact with them, not only for our immediate gratification, but how to also consider the needs of other members of our ecology, whether they be trees or wildlife – or rivers.
To the last comes the news that the dams on the Klamath River are not being built, are not being maintained, but are being dismantled. From NPR’s Erik Neumann:
The dam that was opened yesterday is the lowest on the river. It’s huge – 173 feet tall, made of earth and rock. And after a 16-foot-wide tunnel was opened at the base yesterday morning, a plume of chocolate-milk-brown water surged through, containing sediment that had accumulated over decades.
Link River Dam (1938).
Source: Wikipedia.
No doubt there will be immediate negative effects, and wildfires are mentioned in the above interview. These will be used by advocates of the old measurement systems to attempt to condemn this project, to spread gloom and despair among the affected, to build political power by those who have no wish to solve problems, but to hold power.
I hope they can be ignored. The fact of the matter is that the dams had many negative effects on salmon, and those entities who found them valuable, from killer whales to humans. This is far more important than having to move some folks to new communities and make them whole, something which we can easily do. But it does involve cooperation, hard work, and weighing alternatives — things foreign to demagogues.
This is all in order to shore up the environment which enables our survival.
