World is on Massive Hydroelectric Building Spree

Before Japan’s nuclear meltdown, it looked like the world could be ready for a nuclear renaissance, but it seems we are entering a big hydro renaissance instead. China’s Three Gorges Dam – currently the world’s largest at 22.5 gigawatts (GW) – looks like small potatoes compared to those planned for Africa’s Congo and Brazil’s Amazon. And China just OK’d construction of another enormous 20 GW hydroelectric project with a much taller, even more destructive dam than Three Gorges, the Sichuan project . Brazil’s Amazon Brazil is spending $93 billion on 20 hydropower plants and 34 dams that threaten 2500 square miles of Amazon rainforest. One of those dams, the 11 GW Belo Monte dam, would be the third largest in the world and is 20% completed. Physically blocked for almost a year by indigenous people, they are desperately trying to preserve their home and the pristine Amazon rainforest it would destroy. It would flood 200 square miles, causing massive deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions and irreparable damage to the ecosystem, displacing over 20,000 people from 40 ethnic groups. The Xingu River is their lifeline. They say: "We’re not leaving until you get out of our villages. You have made the fish […]

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