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It's also worth noting that dams aren't just built for electricity. They're also built to control flooding and to control water supply. I'm not saying that's the case in Laos, but it does happen.

People can live without electricity, but it's difficult to live without water.

I cringe each time that I hear a foreigner complain about China's Three Gorges Dam as an "environmental damage". The number of people who have died from floods on those rivers in the last 2000 years in mind-boggling. Yes, it generates a lot of electricity, but it is dual purpose to also control flooding.

    People can live without electricity, but it's difficult to live without water.

This part is also interesting. While traveling in developing countries in East/South/Southeast Asia, the driest places and always the poorest. The only way to overcome is irrigation. The wealthiest places find a way to move water from wet lands to dry lands.

> While traveling in developing countries in East/South/Southeast Asia, the driest places and [sic] always the poorest

s:East/South/Southeast Asia:the United States:

If flood control is the main concern, then the size of the dam does not have to be that of Three Gorges -- there are many things that went into three gorges and Vanity of CCP is a significant part of them.

CPC

People can live without electricity, but only for very brief periods of time. If we had to go extended periods, I don't think it would be a stretch to say civilisational collapse would be immanent.

It's the driest country I've been to in a while, many villages had their water access completely destroyed due to upstream dams.

Completely destroyed, or just no longer enough to support wasteful methods of irrigation? It's been over a decade since I was in SE Asia, but my impression was that they relied heavily on flooding fields for irrigation.

You bring up a good point. I'm unsure.

I live full time in Indonesia, and their irrigation system is much more complex. I saw nothing of the sort in Laos, so perhaps that could be a factor too.

I don't think it is helpful to celebrate countries that won the "geography birth lottery" and have huge rivers that are easy to dam. See: Laos, Paraguay, Norway, Austria, etc. Nothing is "amazing" that they are mostly green energy.

Also, for other readers, Laos is a repressive "communist" dictatorship. It is no surprise that the gov't welcomed Belt & Road programme by China (with high interest loans!) to build a giant dam that enriched few at the expense of many. This is green washing at its very best.

The future of green energy is mostly about solar and wind. Yes, there are some places with easy-to-dam rivers remaining (sub-Saharan Africa), but they are few and far between.

It is still crazy to me that North Africa is not covered in solar panels that export to Europe. Same for Australia, South Africa, and many Gulf countries. Sunshine and wind is the "new oil" of the 21st Century. They can export to neighboring countries or produce green hydrogen.

It's happening. Should happen faster, honestly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco-UK_Power_Projec...

> Laos is a repressive "communist" dictatorship

The same exact story can be said about Iceland, which is very far from being a communist dictatorship (and it bears mentioning that Laos government is not repressive compared to many capitalist democratic governments; I don’t know where you would get that from except preconceived biases).

Iceland sells majority of its renewable energy to foreign aluminum companies. Along with fish it is the biggest export. The government is corrupt and constantly sells rights to build factories to bidders while neglecting environmental impacts. Whole towns are often run by a single Canadian aluminum company. And the green origin certificates is then sold to EU countries (just like indulgence was sold by the Catholic church), so “green” energy consumers are buying in Germany, are actually just coal power, where the energy company bought the origin certificates from Iceland.

See, you don’t need to be communist, nor a dictatorship, to do industrial scale greenwashing

I guess you are talking about Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Plant.

Did you read the book <<Draumalandið — Sjálfshjálparbók handa hræddri þjóð>> or watch the documentary <<Draumalandið>>? Me: Neither, but I am interested. I only learned about this project recently.

The most shocking fact about the whole project (from Wiki):

    The total affected area according to the environmental impact assessment, outlines that a total of 3,000 km2 or 741,316 acres were affected by the project's construction. That is approximately 3% of Iceland's total land mass.

Yup, I was indeed talking about Kárahnjúkar. I do recommend Draumalandið. I actually got a copy as a graduation present back in 2006. I’ve read it many times over, and even though I’ve moved continents, I still keep the copy prominently on my bookshelf.

You think the energy transition can be achieved without harming people? Yes if you are a river fisherman you do not live in the right century. Nor do people living in mountain villages. There are those who will get cancer from working in a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. Still it's not going to be that bad because the pollution from fossil fuel electricity generation is also causing a lot of disease and killing a lot of people.

There are those who will get cancer from working in a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant.

It doesn't have to be this way, the engineering controls needed are well known. It requires the country in question to be financially committed to doing things right. For nuclear power this is already considered an essential prerequisite, yet coal power plants already release vastly more radioactivity and increase the cancer risk of everone around them. As far as reducing total cancer, nuclear is the way to go.

Mistakes have been made in the past. Just because something can be done safely doesn't mean it always will be. I am also a big fan of nuclear but that doesn't mean it's perfect.

Human activities harm people.

That doesn't imply we can't compare alternatives and say "This one will result in less harm than that one."

Personally I'd rather see something getting done than endless feasibility studies. That sort of stalling can really prevent countries from making any progress.

> Yes if you are a river fisherman you do not live in the right century. Nor do people living in mountain villages.

Tell me you're in a privileged western country without telling me.

Does knowing where someone is from disqualify him or her from having an opinion? This type of sentiment borders on racism.