I usually don’t quote from Counterpunch because its writers can be awfully shrill, but there’s a fine piece there today on the BS the Chinese government is doling out as they try rather comically to convince us the Three Gorges Dam is God’s gift to man and nature. My favorite part (it’s long, but it’s good):

I pick up a picture book, The Three Gorges Project On the Yangtze River, at the new Three Gorges Project (3GP) museum gift shop in Yichang. The preface enthuses over the benefits of the project. Indulging in the Chinese penchant for systematizing with numbers, it proclaims “When the Three Gorges Project is completed, it will be beneficial in ten aspects, including flood control, power generation, navigation, aquaculture, tourism, ecological protection, environmental purification, developmental resettlement, transferring water from the south to the north, water supply and irrigation.”

This is very dense disinformation. How can aquaculture be improved by quintupling river traffic, as the development plans dictate, or by the algae blooms that inevitably accompany the creation of reservoirs, choking out oxygen and increasing acidity? Will tourists be drawn to an epic cesspool, in which millions of people’s raw sewage festers in stagnant water, or enticed by gorge stumps? What about the 1300 celebrated cultural sites and archeological digs that will now require SCUBA equipment to explore? The temperature of the reservoir will be several degrees higher than that of the river, possibly contributing to a surge of endemic infections-malaria, encephalitis, and the parasitic disease schistosomiasis-leading The Lancet, the prestigious journal of the British Medical Association, to warn that the 3GP could be the “Chernobyl of hydropower.” Anyone care for a dip?

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The article ends with the rather startling conclusion that China should dismantle the entire dam. Not very likely, I’m afraid.