71
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2024
71 points (98.6% liked)
News
23284 readers
3716 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
There's another whole aspect to the recurring pushes to remove the dams that's pretty much always left out too.
Likely the biggest beneficiaries if the dams were removed would be power companies, who, even with the dams generally operating at a tiny fraction of capacity, are stuck having to sell cheap hydroelectric power at low rates.
If the dams were removed, they'd be able to justify contracting (often with their own subsidiaries) for the construction of expensive new power plants with lower capacity and higher operating costs and would then be able to convince the PUCs to grant them massive rate increases.
Ah, but I'm sure that has nothing to do with the mysteriously well-funded campaigns to remove the dams that get a new round of publicity every few years...
I think it's important to note that the solution isn't to not remove the dams, it's to fucking nationalize the power companies.
Why not both? Yeah, dams cause continued ecological damage and I don't think we should be building more of them, but let's leave them in place until they can be replaced with proper renewables.
But yeah, you're 100% correct that that shit should have been nationalized yesterday. Unfortunately all it takes is a conservative-majority (low-c conservative for an international audience) to re-privatize it and let their buddies buy it at a discount. That seems to be what's happening globally. I'm starting to think the best way forward for most things related to the common good are the formation of non-profits or worker's co-ops but that's a non-starter in something as large-scale as baseline power generation.
Not saying you're wrong, but just to add, [this article] (https://www.opb.org/article/2022/11/18/demolition-plan-of-four-klamath-river-dams-moves-forward/) gives a good account of the issues with several dams along one river. The electric company saves money by demolishing compared to building required fish ladders. They were already expecting less and less power from the dams due to low water levels, which may be drought or competition with irrigation. The dams only accounted for 2% of the electricity they sold, so I'm not sure how big the replacement project will be, if any.
One thing to note is that activism like this does normally happen in "spurts". The legislative cycle is very long and most projects that eventually achieve government backing also require a lot, even matching, private money. Backers may go through several rounds of hype before catching the attention of a big local family or other donor that makes the whole thing plausible enough for the government to act on.