Hey there Jason.. back in the late 80s I was occasionally hanging out with a couple of long distance wilderness canoe types from Canada… Michael and Jeff Peake. Perhaps you crossed paths with them back in the day. Michael was ( maybe is ) a journalist in Toronto as I recall. At that time, they were all worked up about Quebec Hydro, and the incredible destruction being done as they built their hydro facilities. It was a long time ago, but I remember that one of the issues as far as these two Canadians were concerned was the notion that their country was being destroyed for the sake of bringing electricity to New York and and Vermont.. some things never change I suppose.
I also remember them mentioning that one of the phases of those hydro projects that was actually cancelled due to pressure would have flooded an area the size of Switzerland… seems that the realization that this could create issues with the weather patterns was enough for the government to step in..
As I said, these visits were long ago, and I should mention that their canoeing sponsor was Molson Brewing…… but it is interesting, this issue being voted on is not a new one.. it’s the same players playing the same game..
Imagine having canoe expeditions across Labrador sponsored by Molson.. No wonder I thought those guys were just the coolest!
I remember those guys. We went to one of those wilderness canoe gatherings. One of them spoke fluent Monty Python.
HQ has hundreds of dams. They are, in a sense, Big Water with a lot of political muscle. They're not Big Oil, by any means, and they can't ship it around the planet, but they'll reach out of Quebec as best they can.
The middle path here, I guess, is to fight to remove as many of these dams as possible - at least the inefficient, outdated ones, or the ones that drowned the most important habitat - but to accept the harm that many of them cause in the fight to reduce emissions.
I didn't know that HQ was selling power to the US so far back.
On the bright side, I just saw a great photo of three blue herons, one eagle, and a sturgeon together on the site of the former Edwards Dam on the Kennebec.
Right!! It's back to the entwinement. When I learned that one of the ploys of the FF powers that be is to urge each of us to track our carbon footprint, thus shrugging off their responsibility to lower their emissions or even admit to GW, I got all confused in my head about whether I'd be colluding with them if I did turn off the lights. BUT if I stop thinking about the lights, the flight to LA, then I can easily devolve into life is normal, denial, dissociation. Anyway thanks for your posts. I know how much work they take.
Thanks, Jason, not only for all the clear thinking and analysis of the complexity of “electrifying everything,” but also for the idea of our ensnarement. I feel ensnaired by almost every decision I make going about choosing the next steps in my ordinary day. This grass fed beef? This new wool sweater? This vote on Tuesday? It’s exhausting.
Exhausting, yes. I'm reminded of Dylan's "Masters of War," his tune railing against the companies and policymakers creating a global climate of fear, just for a profit. But rather than constantly worrying if our lives will end in nuclear disaster or whether it's safe to bring kids into a world threatened by war, we're worrying about how every little action (and the big ones, like having children) factors into the threat to ecosystems and the atmosphere. But again, our actions are neither the cause nor the solution. We need to act responsibly, for philosophical and ethical reasons, but the change that's required is systemic. It's the heart, arteries, and veins that matter, not the capillaries...
Look at the kind of systemic changes that resulted from Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. I am not ready to give up on individual action: writing a substack column!; organizing a town to change residents' behavior re: fossil fuel consumption, buying local, food waste, giving up meat. If enough capillaries shut down, the heart will too. I think we need paradigm changes and some of us can move that along for groups of people who then move it along for larger groups. The multiplier effect. What do you think??
Well said, Katherine. Thank you for the clarification. I wrote quickly, implying without articulating the line between bringing about systemic change and worrying about whether we turn off the lights every time we leave a room, if you know what I mean. It's a bit of a semantic obstacle course, but individual action aimed at large-scale change (as with the examples you list) is essential whereas individual action focused inward, on small carbon footprint stuff, matters less (and to some extent has been a deliberate ploy to distract us from the systemic work). That said, the little stuff matters if it shapes our ethics toward acting on the bigger work. Which brings us back to the exhausting work of deciding about that beef and sweater...
Thanks, Chris, for the question. It's a good one. Hydro certainly isn't going away, despite its often devastating consequences for regional and riverine ecology. I don't know what CMP would do with the corridor if the project is truly cancelled, though it's possible the forest would be allowed to grow back, since there's no reason to maintain it if the line isn't being built. As for the hydro displacing fossil fuel generation, I haven't seen proof yet that that's happening; rather, the energy simply would simply be shifted into the New England grid from its current use. So apparently there's no additional emissions reduction from this corridor. (I've seen competing claims about whether the shifted energy might mean fossil fuels will be needed where the hydro energy is being lost, but I'm not confident that's true.) Unchecked warming is the great evil, certainly, but we have to pay attention to what's being lost as we fight that battle. There's no easy way through this.
Given that the dams and reservoirs aren’t going away and the corridor is already nearly cleared of trees what’s to be gained by stopping the project now? The hydropower will displace substantial fossil generation. Unchecked warming seems the lesser of the evils.
This stopped me in my tracks, "China produced more concrete from 2011-2013 than the U.S. produced in the entire 20th century". I knew China did things in a big way but most times it just doesn't sink in how big. On being ensnared, your essay reminds me of some of the days I had as headmaster when looking for the "least worst" solution was the best I could find.
I felt the same way, Tom. I didn't really need to sidetrack into the paragraph on concrete and CO2 in this essay but that stunning info on the scale of Chinese development made it worth it. And yes, we have plenty of "least worst" decisions in our lives that aren't civilizational; I just wish it made us better at the Anthropocene stuff.
Hey there Jason.. back in the late 80s I was occasionally hanging out with a couple of long distance wilderness canoe types from Canada… Michael and Jeff Peake. Perhaps you crossed paths with them back in the day. Michael was ( maybe is ) a journalist in Toronto as I recall. At that time, they were all worked up about Quebec Hydro, and the incredible destruction being done as they built their hydro facilities. It was a long time ago, but I remember that one of the issues as far as these two Canadians were concerned was the notion that their country was being destroyed for the sake of bringing electricity to New York and and Vermont.. some things never change I suppose.
I also remember them mentioning that one of the phases of those hydro projects that was actually cancelled due to pressure would have flooded an area the size of Switzerland… seems that the realization that this could create issues with the weather patterns was enough for the government to step in..
As I said, these visits were long ago, and I should mention that their canoeing sponsor was Molson Brewing…… but it is interesting, this issue being voted on is not a new one.. it’s the same players playing the same game..
Imagine having canoe expeditions across Labrador sponsored by Molson.. No wonder I thought those guys were just the coolest!
I remember those guys. We went to one of those wilderness canoe gatherings. One of them spoke fluent Monty Python.
HQ has hundreds of dams. They are, in a sense, Big Water with a lot of political muscle. They're not Big Oil, by any means, and they can't ship it around the planet, but they'll reach out of Quebec as best they can.
The middle path here, I guess, is to fight to remove as many of these dams as possible - at least the inefficient, outdated ones, or the ones that drowned the most important habitat - but to accept the harm that many of them cause in the fight to reduce emissions.
I didn't know that HQ was selling power to the US so far back.
On the bright side, I just saw a great photo of three blue herons, one eagle, and a sturgeon together on the site of the former Edwards Dam on the Kennebec.
Right!! It's back to the entwinement. When I learned that one of the ploys of the FF powers that be is to urge each of us to track our carbon footprint, thus shrugging off their responsibility to lower their emissions or even admit to GW, I got all confused in my head about whether I'd be colluding with them if I did turn off the lights. BUT if I stop thinking about the lights, the flight to LA, then I can easily devolve into life is normal, denial, dissociation. Anyway thanks for your posts. I know how much work they take.
Thanks, Jason, not only for all the clear thinking and analysis of the complexity of “electrifying everything,” but also for the idea of our ensnarement. I feel ensnaired by almost every decision I make going about choosing the next steps in my ordinary day. This grass fed beef? This new wool sweater? This vote on Tuesday? It’s exhausting.
Exhausting, yes. I'm reminded of Dylan's "Masters of War," his tune railing against the companies and policymakers creating a global climate of fear, just for a profit. But rather than constantly worrying if our lives will end in nuclear disaster or whether it's safe to bring kids into a world threatened by war, we're worrying about how every little action (and the big ones, like having children) factors into the threat to ecosystems and the atmosphere. But again, our actions are neither the cause nor the solution. We need to act responsibly, for philosophical and ethical reasons, but the change that's required is systemic. It's the heart, arteries, and veins that matter, not the capillaries...
Look at the kind of systemic changes that resulted from Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. I am not ready to give up on individual action: writing a substack column!; organizing a town to change residents' behavior re: fossil fuel consumption, buying local, food waste, giving up meat. If enough capillaries shut down, the heart will too. I think we need paradigm changes and some of us can move that along for groups of people who then move it along for larger groups. The multiplier effect. What do you think??
Well said, Katherine. Thank you for the clarification. I wrote quickly, implying without articulating the line between bringing about systemic change and worrying about whether we turn off the lights every time we leave a room, if you know what I mean. It's a bit of a semantic obstacle course, but individual action aimed at large-scale change (as with the examples you list) is essential whereas individual action focused inward, on small carbon footprint stuff, matters less (and to some extent has been a deliberate ploy to distract us from the systemic work). That said, the little stuff matters if it shapes our ethics toward acting on the bigger work. Which brings us back to the exhausting work of deciding about that beef and sweater...
Sorry: I meant unchecked warming is a greater evil!
Thanks, Chris, for the question. It's a good one. Hydro certainly isn't going away, despite its often devastating consequences for regional and riverine ecology. I don't know what CMP would do with the corridor if the project is truly cancelled, though it's possible the forest would be allowed to grow back, since there's no reason to maintain it if the line isn't being built. As for the hydro displacing fossil fuel generation, I haven't seen proof yet that that's happening; rather, the energy simply would simply be shifted into the New England grid from its current use. So apparently there's no additional emissions reduction from this corridor. (I've seen competing claims about whether the shifted energy might mean fossil fuels will be needed where the hydro energy is being lost, but I'm not confident that's true.) Unchecked warming is the great evil, certainly, but we have to pay attention to what's being lost as we fight that battle. There's no easy way through this.
Given that the dams and reservoirs aren’t going away and the corridor is already nearly cleared of trees what’s to be gained by stopping the project now? The hydropower will displace substantial fossil generation. Unchecked warming seems the lesser of the evils.
This stopped me in my tracks, "China produced more concrete from 2011-2013 than the U.S. produced in the entire 20th century". I knew China did things in a big way but most times it just doesn't sink in how big. On being ensnared, your essay reminds me of some of the days I had as headmaster when looking for the "least worst" solution was the best I could find.
I felt the same way, Tom. I didn't really need to sidetrack into the paragraph on concrete and CO2 in this essay but that stunning info on the scale of Chinese development made it worth it. And yes, we have plenty of "least worst" decisions in our lives that aren't civilizational; I just wish it made us better at the Anthropocene stuff.