Unintended consequences are the consequences of almost all group decisions. Take dams, for example. They make good sense. “Ya blocks your stream, you gits yer water.” You take control of your environment: No more floods, plenty of water for irrigating, drinking, swimming, and boating. Seems like a good idea. And then, years later, “Oh oh! What’d we do? The salmon numbers are falling and with them so are the whale numbers.”
Damned dams! The number of orcas off the northwest coast dropped to just 74 individuals in 2018. Researchers at the Center for Whale Research say that hydroelectric dams are largely to blame. The dams and overfishing have diminished the chinook salmon numbers, an orca staple. So, the push is on to breach dams like the one across the Lower Snake River. Breaching would save the fish and consequently save the whales. Of course, breaching would also mean the loss of the electric power for which the dams were built. It’s one of those “dammed-if-you-do-damned-because-you-did” moments. The four dams in question seemed a good idea at the time they were built, but pressure to damn the dams arose in groups concerned about whale numbers. Governor Jay Inslee appointed a task force to solve the problem, but the federal government says “the dams provide benefits to the region in low-cost hydropower, navigation, and recreation.”*
In medieval Cambodia, Angkor Wat, a city that covered 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles), grew prosperous for almost a millennium because of an extensive dam and irrigation system. And then. “Oops! Wadrwe goin’ to do wit all this extra rainwater?” The dams damned the city, or at least, that’s the conclusion of researchers.** Apparently, the system supported rice cultivation for the enormous population, but when the rains came in excess of irrigation ditch and pool capacity, floods overwhelmed a system that had suffered centuries of sedimentation that reduced holding capacity under a lack of dredging.***
Controlling Nature is what we do. Ancient Egyptians learned that lesson, as did other ancient people. Unfortunately, those in the distant past who had the technology to control rivers for irrigation, didn’t realize the downside, that eventually, even fresh water’s miniscule salt content adds up to “poison” the soil. And without long-term forecasting, people then—and really, also now—build systems that can’t account for temporary weather changes that might last years, a few decades, or even a few centuries like the droughty conditions that seemed to have affected the Pueblo and the Mayan civilizations. Yes, we can build a city like Timbuctoo near a water supply, and that city can grow to over a 100,000 people, but we can live there in those numbers only as long as we can control the use of water. Today’s population is much lower. Let’s just see whether Las Vegas is the equivalent of medieval Timbuctoo. Lake Mead’s 2018 level reveals that we can build dams, but we can’t make rain, just as the flooding streams after a hurricane reveal that we can account for an average rainfall, maybe even a little excess rainfall, but can’t lessen the quantity of a large storm like 2018’s Hurricane Florence.
And one of the reasons that dams eventually damn is that we are a greedy and selfish lot. Given the ample water supply of a reservoir, we find ourselves consuming without thinking about the consequences of our actions, and we forget that streams are systems—and that all Nature is a system. Do something upstream and you do something downstream, whether or not you are aware of the consequences. We use what we have. It’s our nature to overuse Nature.
Maybe the lesson in damning dams is that we lack sufficient perseverance to educate those who follow the dam-builders, that next generation that grows up with the convenience dams afford: Abundant water and electricity for the region. When there’s no commitment of time and effort, of money and emotional capital, there’s no reason for caution and conservation. Try this: Go to a casino, get lucky at a slot machine, say by winning $500 on a single play, and then get up and leave the casino happy with your good fortune. Don’t replay. Just leave. That’s tough for most people. Given their newfound wealth, they replay, saying, “Well, this is found money. What can I lose? I’ll just gamble a little of it.”
That’s what we do with just about everything we have won in the slot machine of Nature. We are addicted to our winnings even though we know that we can’t control either the randomness of a slot machine or the random changes in Nature that indifferently occur. Civilizations have come and gone; species have gone extinct or been decimated; people have fought over the control of local or regional resources. La Nina and El Nino are Pacific processes that determine whether or not a region thousands of miles away gets more, less, or average precipitation. Chance eruptions of super volcanoes change weather patterns. Solar output can vary sufficiently to alter weather patterns. All the while we build with an eye on our present needs while not realizing that we can’t foresee natural changes.
We’ve attempted to control Nature since we could. In every instance, our control was very temporary. And that points to a flaw in my usual advice. When I say, “What you anticipate is rarely a problem,” I might be giving a false hope. Try as we might, we cannot anticipate much beyond our short-term forecasts, both personal and social. We know the pendula of ideas swing, but we fail to recognize that sometimes they get caught up, stuck, so to speak, or sometimes they lie still until some external force like a new social movement renews the swing. If we look at the 1930s, we see that in America the conversations, the anger, the hopes, and the reasoning on both the Left and the Right, all were foreshadowing of the 2010s. It was in the Hoover era that we began to build one of the world’s great dams. We had hope. We accomplished much in building that dam. And now only less than a century later, the reservoir we made has a falling level because of natural phenomena beyond our control—and supposedly the cement deep in the dam hasn’t finished curing.
We might argue that Angkor Wat lasted about eight centuries, saying that such a civilization is not to be sneezed at. Eight centuries is a long time—relatively speaking. And we might argue that the Mayans had similar success in conquering Nature and controlling water. But it doesn’t take long for Nature, on its time scale, to undo what we do. A few years of excessive rainfall or excessive drought can decimate human and animal populations. That’s not an argument to just give up and let Nature have its way, but it is an argument against our being too proud in confidence that we know what we’re doing in attempting to control what is ultimately beyond our control.
We’ll continue to build dams, and either Nature or social changes will eventually damn us for them. What do you think? Are you on side of the dam-builders or on the side of those who damn the builders?
*Le, Phuong. Breaching dams to save Northwest orcas is contentious issue. Phys.org. October 19, 2018. Online at https://phys.org/news/2018-10-breaching-northwest-orcas-contentious-issue.html
**University Of New South Wales. "Angkor -- Medieval 'Hydraulic City' -- Unwittingly Engineered Its Environmental Collapse." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 12 September 2007. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070905145001.htm
***All dams undergo sedimentation-filling as inflowing water slows upon entering the reservoir, where without the energy of flowing water, transported sediments settle out and pile up, reducing reservoir capacity just as you reduce tub capacity of a tub by settling in tub water. By the way, water impoundment in the last and in this century has actually changed Earth's rotational speed. We have built dams behind which enormous amounts of water are stored. In a small state like Pennsylvania, where there are 50 natural lakes, people have constructed about 2,500 artificial ones. Start adding up the water impounded artificially on every continent behind more than 800,000 dams, and you will understand how much an effect dam-building can have.
Damned dams! The number of orcas off the northwest coast dropped to just 74 individuals in 2018. Researchers at the Center for Whale Research say that hydroelectric dams are largely to blame. The dams and overfishing have diminished the chinook salmon numbers, an orca staple. So, the push is on to breach dams like the one across the Lower Snake River. Breaching would save the fish and consequently save the whales. Of course, breaching would also mean the loss of the electric power for which the dams were built. It’s one of those “dammed-if-you-do-damned-because-you-did” moments. The four dams in question seemed a good idea at the time they were built, but pressure to damn the dams arose in groups concerned about whale numbers. Governor Jay Inslee appointed a task force to solve the problem, but the federal government says “the dams provide benefits to the region in low-cost hydropower, navigation, and recreation.”*
In medieval Cambodia, Angkor Wat, a city that covered 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles), grew prosperous for almost a millennium because of an extensive dam and irrigation system. And then. “Oops! Wadrwe goin’ to do wit all this extra rainwater?” The dams damned the city, or at least, that’s the conclusion of researchers.** Apparently, the system supported rice cultivation for the enormous population, but when the rains came in excess of irrigation ditch and pool capacity, floods overwhelmed a system that had suffered centuries of sedimentation that reduced holding capacity under a lack of dredging.***
Controlling Nature is what we do. Ancient Egyptians learned that lesson, as did other ancient people. Unfortunately, those in the distant past who had the technology to control rivers for irrigation, didn’t realize the downside, that eventually, even fresh water’s miniscule salt content adds up to “poison” the soil. And without long-term forecasting, people then—and really, also now—build systems that can’t account for temporary weather changes that might last years, a few decades, or even a few centuries like the droughty conditions that seemed to have affected the Pueblo and the Mayan civilizations. Yes, we can build a city like Timbuctoo near a water supply, and that city can grow to over a 100,000 people, but we can live there in those numbers only as long as we can control the use of water. Today’s population is much lower. Let’s just see whether Las Vegas is the equivalent of medieval Timbuctoo. Lake Mead’s 2018 level reveals that we can build dams, but we can’t make rain, just as the flooding streams after a hurricane reveal that we can account for an average rainfall, maybe even a little excess rainfall, but can’t lessen the quantity of a large storm like 2018’s Hurricane Florence.
And one of the reasons that dams eventually damn is that we are a greedy and selfish lot. Given the ample water supply of a reservoir, we find ourselves consuming without thinking about the consequences of our actions, and we forget that streams are systems—and that all Nature is a system. Do something upstream and you do something downstream, whether or not you are aware of the consequences. We use what we have. It’s our nature to overuse Nature.
Maybe the lesson in damning dams is that we lack sufficient perseverance to educate those who follow the dam-builders, that next generation that grows up with the convenience dams afford: Abundant water and electricity for the region. When there’s no commitment of time and effort, of money and emotional capital, there’s no reason for caution and conservation. Try this: Go to a casino, get lucky at a slot machine, say by winning $500 on a single play, and then get up and leave the casino happy with your good fortune. Don’t replay. Just leave. That’s tough for most people. Given their newfound wealth, they replay, saying, “Well, this is found money. What can I lose? I’ll just gamble a little of it.”
That’s what we do with just about everything we have won in the slot machine of Nature. We are addicted to our winnings even though we know that we can’t control either the randomness of a slot machine or the random changes in Nature that indifferently occur. Civilizations have come and gone; species have gone extinct or been decimated; people have fought over the control of local or regional resources. La Nina and El Nino are Pacific processes that determine whether or not a region thousands of miles away gets more, less, or average precipitation. Chance eruptions of super volcanoes change weather patterns. Solar output can vary sufficiently to alter weather patterns. All the while we build with an eye on our present needs while not realizing that we can’t foresee natural changes.
We’ve attempted to control Nature since we could. In every instance, our control was very temporary. And that points to a flaw in my usual advice. When I say, “What you anticipate is rarely a problem,” I might be giving a false hope. Try as we might, we cannot anticipate much beyond our short-term forecasts, both personal and social. We know the pendula of ideas swing, but we fail to recognize that sometimes they get caught up, stuck, so to speak, or sometimes they lie still until some external force like a new social movement renews the swing. If we look at the 1930s, we see that in America the conversations, the anger, the hopes, and the reasoning on both the Left and the Right, all were foreshadowing of the 2010s. It was in the Hoover era that we began to build one of the world’s great dams. We had hope. We accomplished much in building that dam. And now only less than a century later, the reservoir we made has a falling level because of natural phenomena beyond our control—and supposedly the cement deep in the dam hasn’t finished curing.
We might argue that Angkor Wat lasted about eight centuries, saying that such a civilization is not to be sneezed at. Eight centuries is a long time—relatively speaking. And we might argue that the Mayans had similar success in conquering Nature and controlling water. But it doesn’t take long for Nature, on its time scale, to undo what we do. A few years of excessive rainfall or excessive drought can decimate human and animal populations. That’s not an argument to just give up and let Nature have its way, but it is an argument against our being too proud in confidence that we know what we’re doing in attempting to control what is ultimately beyond our control.
We’ll continue to build dams, and either Nature or social changes will eventually damn us for them. What do you think? Are you on side of the dam-builders or on the side of those who damn the builders?
*Le, Phuong. Breaching dams to save Northwest orcas is contentious issue. Phys.org. October 19, 2018. Online at https://phys.org/news/2018-10-breaching-northwest-orcas-contentious-issue.html
**University Of New South Wales. "Angkor -- Medieval 'Hydraulic City' -- Unwittingly Engineered Its Environmental Collapse." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 12 September 2007. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070905145001.htm
***All dams undergo sedimentation-filling as inflowing water slows upon entering the reservoir, where without the energy of flowing water, transported sediments settle out and pile up, reducing reservoir capacity just as you reduce tub capacity of a tub by settling in tub water. By the way, water impoundment in the last and in this century has actually changed Earth's rotational speed. We have built dams behind which enormous amounts of water are stored. In a small state like Pennsylvania, where there are 50 natural lakes, people have constructed about 2,500 artificial ones. Start adding up the water impounded artificially on every continent behind more than 800,000 dams, and you will understand how much an effect dam-building can have.
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