Dams, water issues, and overpopulation.

The following is an excerpt from HerpDigest:

4) Australian Dam Project Shelved To Save Fish, Turtles
Wed Nov 11, 09

SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia on Wednesday rejected plans to build a massive new dam, despite pleas it is needed to provide water to residents, because of its feared impact on endangered fish and turtles.

Environment Minister Peter Garrett said the 1.8 billion dollar (1.7 billion US) Traveston Crossing Dam, in Queensland state, would have had an irreversible impact on Australian Lungfish, the Mary River Turtle and Mary River Cod.

"It is clear to me that the Traveston Dam cannot go ahead without unacceptable impacts on matters of national environmental significance," Garrett told reporters.

"The area that would be flooded by this proposal is a critical habitat for populations of these species."

The state government had pushed for the dam, with Premier Anna Bligh saying it was "absolutely critical" for the future of southeast Queensland.

"We are the fastest growing region in Australia and the people who are moving here need to drink water, their families need water to bathe, the industries that employ them need water to operate," Bligh said.

Garrett's decision paves the way for a 10-day consultation process on alternatives, including the possibility of desalination plants, with the government set to announce a final decision on November 25.

The Australian Lungfish, the sole Australian survivor of a family of fishes that have been around since the dinosaurs, has fins that resemble flippers.


First, I'd like to say that it's GREAT that this dam project fell through. Dams have screwed up our streams so much that if anything, we should be looking for ways to remove them, not build more. What I find especially disturbing is Premier Bligh's logic for the dam, in bold. If a given region cannot sustain a population of people greater than some number (that is to say, the population is at its carrying capacity), then people should NOT be moving to that region!!!! Dams, and diverting large quantities of water for human use in general, is simply not sustainable. Compare this situation to that in the American southwest. Too many people live there, and too much water has been (and continues to be) essentially stolen from the Colorado River. The river doesn't even reach the sea anymore, and its severely degraded. And yet people still stress the ecosystem by taking more and more water, despite the fact that the water crisis in that region is becoming more severe. What happens when we've completely killed the river? We've destroyed a natural system that will be very difficult (and costly) to restore, driving any endemic species to extinction, and where is the benefit to the people who "need" that water? They still run out, and they're still forced to re-locate (or die of thirst). Honestly, the situation is worse than a plague of locusts that decimates a prairie, because at least grass is extremely adapted to recovering from disturbances!

Unfortunately I can't recall the source where I originally read this, but based on dendrochronology studies of the American west we are currently at the tail end of an unusually wet period in the climatic cycle. During the days of Manifest Destiny, we populated the land based on the amount of water that was available at the time (and we still managed to overuse the resource), never realizing that a drying trend might occur in the near future (especially since the region was already quite arid to begin with!). If you ask me, that's a pretty good argument for keeping a population below carrying capacity, as there is generally less suffering involved when carrying capacity changes and the population is forced to respond (in the case of a shortage, "response" is generally equated with "death").

In terms of migration to already heavily populated (specifically, how many people the environment can support) areas, one would think that the increased stress on the would spur some sort of population control incentive to action. Several months ago I posted on overpopulation and received some very enlightening comments which (paraphrased) suggested increased taxation for large families. Currently, in America the more offspring someone has, the more tax breaks they receive. This is actually exacerbating the population problem, especially in more impoverished areas where larger families tend to be more common. Rather, the government should tax people more for each additional child that they have. This way economics provide a stronger constraint on population growth in poor areas (perhaps helping to alleviate poverty somewhat for families that choose to limit the number of offspring they have), while at the same time still allows for families who want more children to retain that right (assuming their willing to pay more in taxes). And really, in an overpopulated world resources become more scarce, and it naturally becomes more difficult to support offspring. A tax program like the one suggested would simply reflect that.