On multiple levels, ‘green’, ‘renewable’ energy dams devastate freshwater ecosystems and biodiversity. “While they account for less than 1 percent of the Earth’s surface, freshwater ecosystems are home to more than 10 percent of all species,” Josh Klemm and Eugene Simonov wrote for International Rivers. “Hydropower dams are a key culprit in the rapid 84 percent decline in the populations of freshwater species experienced since 1970.”

Everything is connected. Nature has achieved a balance and we think we’re better engineers. The poet Rob Lewis has written about one of the multiple impacts of our dam engineering work:

Imagine a mother losing her infant daughter after birth and being so overwhelmed with grief she carries her daughter’s lifeless body with her wherever she goes. This happened here, in waters we call the Salish Sea. The mother is an Orca whale named Tahlequah, who on July 24, 2018 gave birth to a female calf. The calf only lived a few hours though, succumbing to malnutrition. The Orca here are starving. The once mighty Chinook, Kings of the salmon, are dwindling, their spawning grounds cut off by dams. Tahlequah couldn’t let her calf go, and began to carry the emaciated body on her nostrum through the waves, diving down to fetch her when she slid off, with fellow pod-members taking turns carrying the calf to give Tahlequah rest. It went on for 17 days across 1,000 sea miles. It became known as the Tour of Grief … Now, it’s happened again …

Collateral damage in the War on CO2. It’ll all be worth it in the end. Right? Dams are giant methane factories. Methane is at least 20 times more damaging than CO2. Dams produce methane in two ways. Firstly, as a result of decomposing organic matter in the water. Secondly, as a result of bacteria which thrive in their oxygen-poor waters. Globally, methane emissions from dams represented about “6% of total human-caused methane emissions in the 2000s and is expected to grow to up to 8%,” wrote Sara Zaske from Washington State University. According to Ana Simeon, writing for the Watershed Sentinel, “Québec’s largest reservoir, Caniapiscau, has a carbon footprint double that of coal power: about 2,200g CO2-equivalent per kilowatt/hour.” Dams: twice as bad as coal when you calculate total costs? Steven Hawley, an author of a book on dams, wrote that, “International studies of dams and their reservoirs confirmed in dozens of peer-reviewed research papers that dams and reservoirs are net contributors to climate change.” This ‘Green’ Transition stuff is lies built on top of lies.

When the dams came to northwestern British Columbia in the 1950s, 70% of the Nechako River’s water ran dry, devastating the salmon runs. “We used to go up and down this creek to hunt and fish,” said James Thomas. “A lot of us had to change our ways. … [the dam] made a big impact.” In one part of the river, in 1984, 45,000 Early Stuart sockeye salmon were recorded. In 2024, 26 were recorded. “The pockets of a few shareholders are lined, beautifully lined, at the expense of everything downstream—the animals, the trees, the humans,” said documentary filmmaker Lyana Patrick to Steph Kwetásel’wet Wood for The Narwhal. “That, to me, is what the dam represents—it represents greed.” The dam involved the flooding of “about 900 square kilometres of Dakelh and Wet’suwet’en territory in central British Columbia,” Kwetásel’wet Wood wrote. “It was built to provide power to an aluminum smelter and today is operated by Rio Tinto Alcan, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto.”

The Indigenous people went through the courts to try and get some justice. Rio Tinto Alcan “has fought tooth and nail not to let a drop of that water go,” Maegan Giltrow, legal counsel for the Indigenous nations, stated in the documentary, Nechako: It Will Be a Big River Again. The courts found again and again that Rio Tinto was not responsible. Still, the people continued on, seeking the faintest justice in colonial courts, hoping to find the smallest chink through which a light of justice could shine. Steph Kwetásel’wet Wood painted a beautiful and moving picture of Lyana Patrick, the maker of the documentary:

She grew up familiar with the devastation of the land—but the documentary process brought her closer to the “beauty of it,” and how devoted people are to stewarding it. Places that are burned, mined, damaged, are still “loved more than ever,” she said.

When the dams came to northern California, the Klamath River got sick, and nature and the Karuk and Yurok tribes—the people of the salmon—suffered greatly. A whole generation of salmon died in one day. “The death of salmon means the death of our entire way,” Brook Thompson told Lucy Sherriff for the BBC. “Everyone is connected. Taking these dams down is a life-or-death situation for us.” In 2024, after generations of struggle, they took the dams down and freed the river again. “A couple years down the road, once the river has been able to repair itself, we’ll begin to see healthier fish runs,” said Oscar Gensaw, a Yurok tribal member and fisherman. “You can definitely see already the river is starting to do its own thing, and that’s the best thing for us—letting the river do what it needs to do, because it knows what it needs to do to repair itself.” A small miracle. Less than a month after the dams were taken down, for the first time in 100 years, salmon were seen in the Klamath River. “The river takes care of us, and we take care of the river,” said Yurok Tribe Chairman, Joseph James.