“China Admits Problems With Three Gorges Dam”, NYT, 19/5 (also at The Age). Technologically-advanced societies are often under the delusion that Nature can be subdued and conquered, and massive engineering projects such as the huge Three Gorges Dam are an example of such hubris. But the “Revenge of Unintended Consequences” (phrase from a book title) ensures that things will eventually go wrong, and sure enough, environmental problems are emerging: the backed-up river lake is polluted, there is a possible link to recent earthquakes from the sheer weight of water, and the 1.4 million people displaced are not all resettled. Dams disrupt the ecological cycle of rivers (see Wikipedia article) and, like intensive agriculture, are a characteristic of a society living beyond its limits.
A mindset I find particularly loathsome is that of Nature merely being a resource; something to be conquered and exploited and built over. It is, or should be, an archaic way of viewing the world, but one that is still held by certain men (mostly men), and mainly businessmen at that (though businesswomen such as Gina Rinehart, who would use slave labour if she could, can also be included). Certain space enthusiasts (“Space Cadets”) also share that mindset, though they extend such exploitation to the rest of the Solar System and beyond. It’s a view emblematic of agricultural and industrialized societies, but not of humanity generally: hunter-gatherer cultures, in contrast, lived (and still, with increasing difficulty, live) lightly upon the land, changing it little.
Edit, 18/4/2012: another article about dam problems: “Landslide Risk at Reservoir Cited in China”.
