It seems all the opposition to the damming of the Baker and Pascua rivers that slice through the rugged Patagonia region of southern Chile hasn't worked. This week the Chilean government approved a plan to make the $7 billion project a reality.
"The HidroAysen project envisages five dams to ... generate 2.75 gigawatts of power for Chile's booming economy," writes Australia's Sydney Morning Herald in an article from tomorrow. (It's always tomorrow Down Under.) "The government has championed the dams as vital to poverty alleviation and growth, but public opinion has split, with many saying the project is unnecessary and will devastate an ecological haven."
An Ipsos poll puts 61 percent of average Chileans at odds with the hydroelectric dams. In Coihaique, where a government panel voted 11 to one abstention in favor of the dams, the SMH reports police arrested several protesters among roughly a thousand who were evidently unconvinced by the government's three-year environmental review of the project. Not very surprising considering that the members of the review panel were political appointees of President Sebastian Pinera.
According to the Associated Press, analysts predict Chile will have to triple its energy output in the next 15 years to meet the demands of its growing and progressing society. The rivers in that part of the country are seen as a way to increase output without disrupting a huge human community. Indeed, only three dozen families would be uprooted, says the AP, but "the dams would drown 14,000 acres (5,700 hectares), require carving clear-cuts through forests, and eliminate whitewater rapids and waterfalls that attract ecotourism. They also would destroy habitat for the endangered Southern Huemul deer: Fewer than 1,000 of the diminutive animals, a national symbol, are believed to exist." The electricity would travel through a series of power lines at the bottom end of the continent--another point of contention is the infrastructure required to move energy from point A to point B--bound for Santiago and other urban areas some 1500 miles north.
Yet, the fact is Chile has to sustain itself somehow; it's energy dependence is increasingly volatile. It imports 97 percent of the fossil fuels it uses and regional instability can affect those imports, says the AP. And its reliance on domestic hydroelectricity strains reservoirs during periods of drought.
My friends over at The Cleanest Line, the retailer Patagonia's blog, have their own take on the news. The "region of southern Chile is considered one of the world's last, great wildernesses," they write. "Less destructive alternative energy sources are abundant, and the Chilean government may not fully appreciate the significant tourism revenue opportunities that could be gained by safeguarding the natural grandeur of this spectacular area." While it's clear a smart energy policy is needed, southern Chile is not where to start.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., JFK's nephew, a loud environmentalist and lawyer for the National Resources Defense Council opposes the plan. So does part-time South American resident and full-on writer Patrick Symmes, who wrote at length about the project in the June 2010 issue of Outside magazine--a story called "The Beautiful and the Dammed."
I can see how a bevy of Americans angry with Chile might send the wrong message to ambivalent Chileans, given the puzzling disparity between our national energy consumptions. Lord knows if defeating shitty policy was as simple as painting a few signs, chanting in unison, and fronting bail money, the U.S. would be in a better place right now. (As would Egypt, Libya, Syria, Qatar, and so on.) But at what point do we protect nature because it's the wilderness and other beings live there? What of the habitats lost? Or the livelihoods erased? Not to mention the tourism dollars spent elsewhere.
The Atacama Desert, on the Chilean end of the altiplano, the highest expanse of plateau on Earth, that covers most of Bolivia and parts Peru and Chile and is partially settled, could surely be tapped for solar and wind power, a point RFK, Jr., has made. Other options exist, although they mostly involve burning rocks: three coal-burning power plants have recently been approved for construction. But if they're going to compound the environmental damage that comes with producing energy, why not keep it where development has already taken root? Why fuck with paradise?
I've never been to Patagonia; it's #2 on my travel list, behind any island in the South Pacific with warm water, no TVs, head-high surf, and a tiny population. But from everything I've read, watched, and heard from friends who have visited, Patagonia's pure majesty seems cause enough to preserve it, regardless of economic and energy alternatives. Every country has the right to employ its natural resources to advance its own future. Unfortunately, in this instance, Chile's resources happen to lie in a backyard thats inherently more attractive than others. My opposition is staked upon looks alone.
Hopefully, before it's too late, Chile will reevaluate its energy options, and try to keep its environmental impact to a minimum. To turn back, in a sense. "Everyone has to, sooner or later," writes Symmes. "Not every future is worth having."
Conservacion Patagonica was established in 2000 and is working to establish the Patagonia National Park--a breadth of diverse terrain the approximate size of Yosemite in California. Visit their site for more info on the park and efforts to defeat the proposed dams: http://www.conservacionpatagonica.org/index.htm
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