Jacques Leslie is a foreign correspondent turned non-fiction writer who once covered the war on Vietnam for the Los Angeles Times
Jacques Leslie discovered when he wrote for Harper’s that “At the core of every argument about water are dams, the modern pyramids, generators of extravagantly apportioned electricity, water storage, and environmental and social disasters.“
Millions of people have been displaced and some of the most fertile land been drowned. In spite of their size dams are not forever. Sooner or later they will all silt up and become expensive waterfalls. They pose a constant looming danger to life downstream when they fall into disrepair or are damaged by earthquakes or acts of war.
A battle is being fought by independent scientists and those employed by the hydropower industry over the discovery that reservoirs behind the world’s dams are a source of global warming pollution. In the case of big reservoirs in the tropics — where most new dams are proposed — hydropower can actually emit more greenhouse gases per kilowatt-hour than fossil fuels, including dirty coal.
Since the recording of this archival program in 2006 there is good news of positive action. Jacques Leslie kept campaigning and educating on the effects on dams and reported in April of 2023 that: The Era of Building Big Dams Draws to a Close. In an editorial in the Los Angeles Times Leslie wrote that the era of dam removals has begun and reported that The Iron Gate Dam on the lower Klamath River is one of four dams that will be torn down to restore salmon fisheries.
https://www.jacquesleslie.com/
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:59 — 39.8MB)
