oth the countries have a huge population and increasing energy demands to propel the growth at the current rate. While the Yangtze river project was mainly undertaken to serve the energy needs of the rapidly growing eastern cities of Shangai and central Chinese states, the Narmada river project's main focus was to supply water for the irrigation demands of the vast agricultural regions of the Gujarat and Maharashtra and to provide water supply for the drought prone state of Rajasthan. While China provided quick resettlement for the oustees, in India's case the poor and neglected resettlement program has invited global concern. oth the projects lie in regions that have high tectonic activity and already the environmental impacts are visible in the frequent landslides happening around the Three gorges region. While there is no question of doubt that dams are useful for power generation and to increase agricultural production, the…...
Gorges Dam
In 2009, a monumental undertaking that began in China in 1994 is planned for completion. The Three Gorges Dam project on the Yangtze iver is expected to be the largest hydroelectric dam in the world. It will stretch nearly a mile across and tower 575 feet above the earth's third longest river. Its reservoir will reach over 350 miles upstream and force the displacement of close to 1.9 million people. The cost is approximated at over $24 billion (China Online). Since its conception, however, this project has caused considerable conflict. Whether it will be constructed as designed and finished by its due date is highly questionable.
The idea for the Three Gorges Dam was proposed to solve several major national problems. First, the project was seen as an important future source of energy for China's ever-expanding electrical usage. It was also expected to significantly reduce the power of the…...
bureaucracy can occur anywhere in the world, despite wide cultural and political differences. The United States, Europe, China -- it makes no difference. The Three Gorges Dam offers a prime example. Over the many years of this project, the Chinese government, displaced residents, special interest groups such as environmentalists and anthropologists, and contractors have become so mired in on-again-off-again decisions, regulations and continuous controversies that the original ideas for this massive undertaking are completely lost. It seems logical that the entire venture should be delayed and then analyzed for future goals.
It appears by recent newspaper articles that this just might be the case. In the middle of January, 2005, the State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) ordered 30 large-scale projects being done for the dam to be stopped because of a lack of mandatory environmental impact assessments. Any firms continuing their work would be fined (although not heavily by relative…...
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References Cited
China View. "Three Gorges Company faces fines." February 2, 2005. Retrieved February 16, 2005. http://www.chinaview.cn
This has also introduced salt water fish and marine life that can exist in fresh water, the many forms of Jellyfish being one of several who have made their way nearly a hundred miles inland on the river (Salazar, 2000). If the dam had not been built the influx of marine life from the ocean would not have occurred, which would have led to a greater stabilization of the fish ecosystem. The many benefits of a fish and water-based ecosystems matter more in countries with lower per capita incomes where the waters are fished for regularly meals instead of for sport. In China, the river is the equivalent of the western world's grocery store. Creating such a huge disruption to the river has in effect contaminated the "grocery store" for millions of residents who rely on the fish for a source of food along the river's bans. Not only…...
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References
Henry C. Alberts, Renee M. Alberts, Mitchel F. Bloom, a. Diane LaFlamme, & Satu Teerikangas. (2004). The Three Gorges Dam Project from a systems viewpoint. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 21(6), 585.
Joanna Gail Salazar. (2000). Damming the child of the ocean: The three Gorges project. Journal of Environment & Development, 9(2), 160-174.
Manik Suri. (2003). A river in peril: The waters rise at Three Gorges. Harvard International Review, 25(3), 10-11.
Gorges Dam
The Chinese government believes that construction of the Three Gorges Dam has helped produce solutions to the country's energy needs, and to flood control (of the Yangtze, the third largest river in the world). The arguments used by the Chinese as to flood control have some validity when a researcher realizes that over the past 2,000 years, there have been "200 catastrophic floods along the Yangtze's banks" (Watson, 2005). Also, because 70% of China's electricity comes from the burning of coal -- which causes choking smog in the big cities and contributes to the greenhouse gases that are causing climate change -- hydroelectric development seems like an alternative to coal-fired power plants.
Six Specific Risks with the Three Gorges Dam (TGD) in China
Meanwhile, what are six risks that the Chinese were willing to take when they built the dam? Certainly one is environmentally related, and Chinese scholars and journalists…...
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Bibliography
Alberts, Henry C., Alberts, Renee M., Bloom, Mitchel F., LaFlamme, A. Dianne, and Teerikangas, Satu. 2004. 'The Three Gorges Dam Project from a Systems Viewpoint.' Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Vol. 21, 585-602.
Campbell-Hyde, Blake. 2009. 'Breaking Ground: Environmental and Social Issues of the Three Gorges Dam in China.' American University. Retrieved June 18, 2014, from http://www1.american.edu .
Watson, Stephanie. 2005. 'Why could China's Three Gorges Dam cause an environmental disaster?' Discovery Company. Retrieved June 18, 2014, from http://science.howstuffworks.com .
Yardley, Jim. 2007. 'Chinese Dam Projects Criticized for their Human Costs.' The New York Times. Retrieved June 18, 2014, from http://www.nytimes.com .
" Deng's one child policy, moreover, had been one of the most important insurance plans put in place to insure the speed and power of Chinese capitalist development.
What this mean was that Deng chose to channel the capital surplus of the Chinese people into factories, railroads, power plants, and the damming the Yangtze River with the massive Three Gorges Dam, rather than into an ever larger Chinese population.
Deng's One Child Policy: Positive and Negative
As often happens in periods of massive change in human history, the results of Deng's one child policy were partly good and partly bad. Let's begin with some of the negative consequences of Deng's policy. Most noticeable is the fact that there are more "little emperors" than there are "little empresses" in China today. Because another aspect of Deng's population policy was abortion on demand, many young Chinese who were about to become parents decided to abort…...
Life captures a very important moment in Chinese history, when the Three Gorges dam flooded an area of the Yangtze. Ancient and traditional villages were wiped away, displacing over one million people and forever transforming the idyllic landscape of this region of China. The filmmaker captures the beauty -- both the lost beauty and the eternal beauty -- of this region. Scenery shots are not the only compelling thing about Still Life, however. This is a film about people. I especially appreciated the filmmaker's ability to blend the stories of the individuals within their natural, social, economic, and political environments. I care about the people because they seem real, as the acting is subtle and it almost feels as if we are watching a documentary at times. I also like the fact that the film captures the nature of Chinese culture as being very long-term oriented, which is why…...
Ed Burtynsky
My immediate response to Burtynsky's work was to think that the artist had managed to find a relevant aesthetic response to the most serious issue of the twenty-first century, which is climate change. he difficulty with climate change is that it does not lend itself easily to artistic representation or commentary: any small child knows that slowly and painstakingly building up a castle made of Legos is not as exciting as destroying a Lego castle. Ecology can seem tedious and destruction can seem fun. Burtynsky's work sidesteps this difficulty because in some sense he is documenting the destruction.
his does not mean Burtynsky's work feels message-driven. In photographic work documenting the large-scale changes that human beings make on their physical environment, such as "Mines," "Quarries," and "Railcuts" (all of which are large enough to be actual geological phenomenon but are in fact manmade, and each of which is documented in…...
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This does not mean Burtynsky's work feels message-driven. In photographic work documenting the large-scale changes that human beings make on their physical environment, such as "Mines," "Quarries," and "Railcuts" (all of which are large enough to be actual geological phenomenon but are in fact manmade, and each of which is documented in a separate photographic series) Burtynsky is showing, rather than telling. His work does not preach a save-the-planet message but instead allows the viewer to infer the presence of human activities behind these panoramic views of "un-natural" landscapes. I use the word "un-natural" because Burtynsky's work first meets the eye as standard nature photography -- a sort of Ansel Adams in Technicolor -- until the viewer realizes that these are not "natural" scenes but scenes of man-made disruption.
Burtynsky's work appeals to me for its relevance. We live in an era when climate change is happening fast due to human activity, while humans are not responding quickly enough for a crisis of such magnitude. While other art forms may attempt to capture an environmental theme -- plenty of Hollywood films have an obvious ecological message -- photographs like Burtynsky's do not manipulate an audience like a movie does. His pictures merely provide evidence, and let the audience draw their own sober conclusions. In some sense, the major work of aesthetic ordering and organization in Burtynsky's work is not the photography itself but the man-made structures and scenes that he depicts -- this problematizes our category of "the aesthetic" insofar as many of these devastated scenes have their own haunting and desolate beauty, and clearly that is part of Burtynsky's point.
2. Burtynsky's series "China" depicts the environmental and landscape changes caused by large-scale human development projects during China's ongoing economic boom. For example, Burtynsky's photograph "Feng Jie #3" from part of the series of the "Three Gorges Dam Project, Yangtze River, China 2002" is only a little more than ten years old, and shows construction on an electrical generation dam being built on one of China's largest rivers. Compositionally speaking, "Feng Jie #3" uses the traditional elements of photography to frame Burtynsky's evident message. The predominant color in the photo is the ashen grey stone of the broken rubble that litters the landscape, presumably stone used in the building of the dam itself. But this landscape has become inhospitable for human habitation, and so on the far left of the photo -- where the eye naturally begins to "read" the image from left to right -- we can see a colorful and flimsy cloth tent, which is the closest to a human dwelling that can be placed on top of this vast rockpile. In the distance also on the left we can see an actual human dwelling -- a multi-story concrete apartment dwelling -- which is framed to provide context to the cloth tent. But the overall movement of
The only hope rests in being sensible and alert to the danger we have incurred upon ourselves. Going green and seriously focusing on renewable forms of energy is the only way that we could save this planet from the impending disaster.
ibliography
1) World Water Council, 'Water Crisis', retrieved Oct 1st, 2010, from, http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/index.php?id=25
2) U.S. Census ureau, 'World Population Summary', retrieved Oct 1st, 2010, from, http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopinfo.php
3) WWF, 'Water: Our Rivers Lakes and Wetlands', retrieved Oct 2nd 2010, from http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/about_freshwater/
4) Lester rown, (Oct 2001), 'China's Water Table Levels are Dropping Fast', retrieved Oct 2nd 2010, from, http://www.grist.org/article/table/
5) lue Planet, 'The Facts about the Global Drinking Water Crisis', retrieved Oct 2nd 2010, from, http://blueplanetnetwork.org/water/facts
6) Pew Center, 'Coal and Climate Change Facts', retrieved Oct 2nd 2010, from, http://www.pewclimate.org/global-warming-basics/coalfacts.cfm
7) Science Daily 'Environmental Scientists Estimate That China Could Meet Its Entire Future Energy Needs y Wind Alone', retrieved Oct 2nd 2010, from, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090910142350.htm
2006 report to Congress on China's WTO compliance (2006, December 11). United States Trade Representative. Retrieved at http://www.ustr.gov/assets/Document_Library/Reports_Publications/2006/asset_upload_file688_10223.pdf brief chronology of China's intellectual property protection. Retrieved at http://www.american.edu/TED/hpages/ipr/cheng.htm
alfour, F.(2008, March 18). World sneezes, China's just fine. usinessWeek. Retrieved at http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/mar2008/gb20080318_747713.htm?chan=globalbiz_asia+index+page_asia+investing
China. The World Fact ook. Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html#Econ
Economic reform in the People's Republic of China. Wikipedia. Retrieved at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform
Gupta, a.K. (2008) the quest for global dominance. p. 239..Jossey-ass. ISN978-0-470-19440-9
Navarro, P. And Chien, E. (2006, April 21). China's devalued yuan: Hu won't budge; ush doesn't get it. New America Media. Retrieved from http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=3bd87bd1fb3eb56a29a5759f349165f8
Patten, C. (2005, September 26). Comment & analysis: Why Europe is getting China so wrong. Financial Times. Retrieved at http://search.ft.com/ftArticle?queryText=China+the+world%E2%80%99s+largest+economy+for+18+of+the+past+20+centuries&y=6&aje=false&x=14&id=050926000484&ct=0&nclick_check=1
The real great leap forward. (2004, September 30). The Economist print edition. Retrieved at http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=3219418...
In many ways, the Vietnam ar represented the height of Cold ar tensions in much the same way that the decade was giving way to an inevitable breaking point in environmental negligence. Though the years which would follow would see a gradual intensification of environmental protection laws, these have by and large been nullified by the impact of that for which Abbey offers the most criticism. ith both Vietnam and the destruction of many of America's richest points of flora and fauna diversity being the products of our ongoing 'evolution' toward technological, industrial and commercial advance, Abbey is persuasive in drawing a sympathetic mistrust of modernity from the reader. Ultimately, it produces a sense of loss for ildland Recreation opportunities while simultaneously reinforcing the primal importance of such experiences.
In this way, Desert Solitaire stands in 20th century environmental history as a guide to alternative living. hile he is unflinching…...
Dallek used traditional methods of research and structure making his book a true "history" from a collegiate-academic point-of-view. But this does not invalidate Caro's work. The problem, then, in looking at both of these books to be authorities is to figure out if it really matters if Caro's lack of credentials and traditional (meaning library) method of information gathering actually denote a lesser effect on the overall impact of the work. The problem, then, that Caro faces is the determination if his work actually is quote worthy of other historians quoting / referencing him.
For Dallek, his unwavering adherence to strict academic research leaves the punch out of the story of Johnson. It is one thing to have a series of supported and peer-reviewed facts lined up chapter by chapter, and it is yet another to make those facts sing in an engaging story format. Caro's book is by far…...
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References
Caro, Robert J. The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, vol 1.New York,: Vintage, 1990.
Dallek, Robert. Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and his Times, 1908-1960, vol 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
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