juxtaposition
by Andy Tyson
Nice juxtaposition. Traveling last year in central China, I visited the under construction Three Gorges Dam. This is the largest dam in the world – touted to produce a huge amount of energy and regulate the Yangtze, a pernicious river, prone to flooding and all but impassible to boat travel. Now there is a long thin lake, great for commerce transport, sightseeing, and lots of electricity, with regulated outflow to control flooding. Despite the debatable gains, the human and environmental costs have been huge. I was interested to see the spectacle and get a firsthand feel for the impact. It is hard to summarize my impressions in a short post. The immensity of the dam and project, holding that volume of water in the face of one human, who doesn’t speak the language let alone understand the culture that brought the project to life. Possibly like visiting Martians and viewing their largest civil engineering project. As the tour was ending, I came upon a fascinating sight. Just down stream from the mile wide, electricity belching dam I saw a solar powered water monitoring station. Despite terawatts of electricity being produced less than a mile upstream, it was deemed financially and functionally appropriate to use solar electricity to power a monitoring station. The message was clear: choose the appropriate technology for the job. Solar electricity is reliable, robust, and independent. Solar is a fixed financial investment and it is well up to most of the everyday tasks we need electricity for in our homes. Our planets future is depended on choosing the right energy source for the job.
