The resiliency of nature and the speed with which it rebounds is both astonishing and important. What a great piece of journalism -- so rich in detail and beautifully written.
The hum of the generators is replaced by the river singing in full voice, shrugging off a century of confinement like it never happened. Nature’s resurgence is visible everywhere.
Yes, it was wonderful to read. The coloring of the mice and otters. The before and after undersea graphic showing the beach creation was well done. A solid article with the right amount of visual treats.
Yes, yes, nature and trees, that's all very nice but I'd like to know how much electrical power generation was lost by demolishing these dams and, if it's a significant amount, how that power generation is being replaced. We didn't build dams just for fun.
This article states the dam was no longer worth the costs involved in maintaining it. According to Wikipedia:
by the early 21st Century, the combined power output of both dams only provided the equivalent of 38% of the electricity needed to operate one paper mill, the Daishowa America mill.[citation needed]
Fair enough, then, thanks. I suppose I'm just automatically suspicious of this sort of cheerleading, even in a situation where it ultimately makes economic sense.
Hmmm. The thing is, ultimately, all wealth is extracted from the earth and a significant part of that is from the biome -- the living part of the world, not just the minerals and that type thing. I see a lot of assumption that nature has no inherent economic value for humans and I am horrified by this widespread assumption because if you cut into the health of the biome too much, productivity goes down.
In a nutshell, it is kind of like how America was winning the cold war with Russia by investing something like 3% or 4% of the American economy in our military versus their 20% to 30% of the Russian economy. They were bleeding their economy to death and could not keep up.
So, ultimately, if we really want to continue supporting the unprecedented billions worth of human population, we need more nature and trees, not less. We need our buildings to multitask, with solar panels on the roof and things like that, so we can shrink our per capita footprint while raising our per capita quality of life.
I am just glad technology is emerging that has the potential to reconcile that friction. Historically, it was an either/or choice. It needs to be an and choice and that is increasingly feasible.
Cheers! And thanks for asking. It reminded to me look it up, something I had been intending to do anyway.
> even in a situation where it ultimately makes economic sense.
For me, one of the nice things about living in Washington State is that the choice that makes the most economic sense is not always the one that is chosen. It would make a lot of economic sense for Seattle to sell off huge chunks of its massive parks system, but that doesn't happen. Tree removal and water protection ordinances are the norm and they are, by and large, enforced. There's a healthy respect for the nature found all over the state.
(I'm not arguing that "not following the economic choice" is the majority outcome; far from it. But coming from a state that lived up to the rule of streets in suburbs--bulldoze all of the trees and name streets after them--and pushes its Congressional delegation for exemptions from environmental rules in order to get man-made lakes built, it's a nice change.)
Oh, economic rationality is a pretty weak constraint. Keeping your parks makes perfect economic sense---you'll just have to be aware that they are part of your consumption spending and account for them as such.
(And ultimately, all economic activity is to produce consumables one way or another.)
Moreover, even if some powerful lobby were able to show that it will derive modest benefits from bulldozing all of Seattle's parks and replacing them with temples of consumerism, it doesn't follow that doing so would make economic sense for the people of Seattle or the people of Washington in the main, once negative externalities are taken into account. It's not that you can't put a price on nature, it's more that humans don't do a good job of it when they even try, and law that takes this fact into account is good law.
I love camping at Elwha. If you ever get a chance, the Olympic Park Elwha camp site is right next to the river! Not very developed (no showers, but I still think they had some plumbing).
The hum of the generators is replaced by the river singing in full voice, shrugging off a century of confinement like it never happened. Nature’s resurgence is visible everywhere.