Building the World's Tallest Dam Is Okay with Chinese Environmental Officials

In a growing world with booming economies, we all demand more energy, which generally comes at a detriment to the environment. Nowhere is that tradeoff between growth and conservation more evident than in China, where environmental officials have just approved plans for the tallest dam in the world, despite its impact on endangered and rare fish and plant species.

According to the Guardian, the recently approved Shuangjiangkou dam reaches a whopping 1,030 feet high, all designed to trap the force of the Dadu river in southwestern Sichuan province, which is home to a number of rare species. The finished project is projected to produce 7.93 billion kilowatt-hours per year.

That's a lot of juice. And, as with any massive dam project, producing it means completely changing the watershed environments up- and downstream of the dam itself. A statement released by the Chinese environmental ministry about the project's environmental approval specifically noted that a number of rare fish species and plants will be affected as the Dadu is interrupted and upstream watersheds are flooded.

That doesn't mean the ministry rubber stamped the approval without providing a means to mitigate the environmental effects. , "The measures include protecting fish habitats in tributaries, building fish ladders and increasing fish breeding and releasing, as well as constructing seed banks for rare plants and cultivating them artificially." The Xinhua report states that about 5 percent of the $4.42 billion project will be designated to environmental protection.

Still, it's a big-ass dam, and if the project fully goes through, it's going to have a big-ass environmental impact. But is the dam a better choice than all of the coal China burns? I'd imagine so. China is building out its clean energy portfolio in a massive way, and even diving into things like thorium. None of them are zero impact, but the hope moving forward is that we'll grow in the best way possible.

If we all ran out of electricity, the world would collapse into nightmarish chaos. (Yet finally, it'd be a reason to give up wearing pants!) That's why energy production requires pragmatic environmentalism—even a solar farm has environmental impact, but we accept this because we need energy to keep our daily lives afloat.