For the past six months, I have been trying to read Goodbye to a
River by John Graves. There are others, buried beneath magazines, last
Sunday’s
New York Times, newspaper clippings, and press releases. Half a
dozen
books I was supposed to review last year still sit on my shelf. Another
half
dozen new arrivals rest nearby.
That’s a roundabout way of saying that I get a lot of books and I
rarely get
to read them. But lately, I’ve made time. Here are a few reviews:
The River Stops Here: How One Man’s Battle to Save His Valley
Changed the
Fate of California
by Ted Simon (Random House, $23 hard)
It was to be called the Dos Rios Dam. Seventy stories
tall,
it was to be built on the Eel River in California by the Army Corps of
Engineers, a quasi-military federal agency whose primary reason for
existence
has been massive public work projects, like dams. Proposed during the
peak of
dam-building fervor in the West, Dos Rios was supposed to be a flood
control
project. It also would have created one of the largest lakes in the
western
U.S. But preventing occasional floods downstream meant permanent
flooding of
the Round Valley, where Richard Wilson owned land.
A devout opponent of the dam, Wilson perhaps more than any
other
person was responsible for stopping the Dos Rios project. His obstinacy
and
fervor were mentioned in Marc Reisner’s epic book of water in the west,
Cadillac Desert. Now, Ted Simon, a British journalist who lives
in the
region, has written an entire book focusing on Wilson and the Dos Rios
project.
In the book, Simon lets attorney Lewis Butler describe his first
encounter with
Wilson: “This guy comes to the building and knocks on my door, and I
let him
in, and I remember this very well too, he’s got on a dirty hat, a short
brimmed
Stetson, stained, very carefully stained, and a dirty shirt and dirty
pants and
dirty boots and he said his name was Richard Wilson.
“He said he had a problem. Had I heard of the Dos Rios Dam? No. Had
I heard of
the Round Valley? No. He got out a map and showed me.” Butler and
Wilson were
later to become close allies in the fight against the dam.
Simon’s book presents a case study of water in California and how the
state’s
water policy has been dominated by the Corps of Engineers and
metropolitan
areas (like Los Angeles) which have continually sought ways to steal
water from
rural residents.
Simon told me that he didn’t want his book to be characterized as
an
environmental book. It isn’t. Rather, his book is about the politics of
water,
the politics of federal bureaucracies, and one man’s fight to stop a
project
that should never have been started. California may seem like a long
way from
Texas. But if you’ve been following the machinations of the fight over
the
water in the southern portion of the Edwards Aquifer, you know that San
Antonio
is now looking to steal water from other parts of the state. If you are
familiar with that fight, you will see similar themes in The River
Stops
Here. Anyone interested in the politics of water should read this
book.
The Immigration Dilemma: Avoiding the Tragedy of the
Commons
by Garrett Hardin (Federation for American Immigration Reform, $5
paper)
Available from FAIR, 1666 Connecticut Ave, NW #400, Washington, D.C.
20009.
A collection of essays written by Garrett Hardin, a professor at
the
University of California-Santa Barbara, this short book argues for
restraints
on immigration and family size. The heart of the book (and the
subtitle) come
from an essay Hardin wrote in 1968. At the beginning of his treatise,
Hardin
quotes two security analysts who conclu-ded that the nuclear weapons
race could
not be won. “It is our considered professional judgement that this
dilemma has
no technical solution,” they said. Hardin takes this quote to launch a
far-ranging essay that covers everything from Adam Smith’s economic
theory to
noise pollution.
Almost 30 years after it was published, Hardin’s essay seems
particularly
prescient. “The National Parks present another instance of the working
out of
the Tragedy of the Commons,” Hardin writes. “At present, they are open
to all,
without limit… Plainly, we must soon cease to treat the parks as
commons or
they will be of no value to anyone.” In fact, over the past few years
the
National Park Service has begun restricting access to Yosemite Valley,
the
Grand Canyon and other parks to prevent the parks from being degraded
by the
horde of tourists who visit them every year.
Of noise pollution, he writes, “There is almost no restriction on
the
propagation of sound waves in the public medium. The shopping public is
assaulted with mindless music, without its consent. Our government is
paying
out billions of dollars to create a supersonic transport which will
disturb
50,000 people for every one person who is whisked from coast to coast
three
hours faster.”
Hardin’s book also contains chapters like “Free Immigration, The
Enemy of Free
Enterprise,” in which he writes, “So long as we cannot reduce
unemployment to
zero, we should reduce immigration to zero.” Hardin’s publisher, the
Federation
for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), advocates a similar strategy.
They
propose an end to illegal immigration and a cap on legal immigration at
no more
than 300,000 people per year.
Whether or not you agree with FAIR’s views on immigration, Hardin’s
1968 essay
has much to say about global population. He also appears to advocate
some sort
of global population cap, but offers no recipe for limiting family size
and
enforcing his ideal of limited breeding. “We must now recognize… the
necessity of abandoning the commons in breeding. No technical solution
can
rescue us from the misery of overpopulation. Freedom to breed will
bring ruin
to all.”
A study just released by Population Action International appears to
confirm
Hardin’s essay. PAI says that world population is now growing eight
times
faster than cultivated land area. The result, says PAI, could be food
scarcity
for one billion people within the next 30 years. PAI says one in three
Africans
is already malnourished and that “continued population growth could
result in
unsustainable demands on the earth’s agricultural land and water
resources in
the coming decades.”
Hardin’s pronouncements are stark and unapologetic. In the wake of
the Cairo
conference, which tried to deal with the global population boom, this
book
offers a hard-line approach.
The State of the World, 1995
A Worldwatch Institute Report on Progress Toward a Sustainable
Society
(W.W. Norton, $11.95 paper)
Every year, the folks at Worldwatch address some of the globe’s most
pressing
problems in a State of the World report. This year, the issues covered
include:
fisheries, solar energy, mountain ecosystems, sustainable materials,
budgeting
for disarmament, and China.
One of my favorite sections was written by Christopher Flavin, an
energy
policy analyst. A condensed version of Power Surge: Guide to the
Coming
Energy Revolution by Flavin and Nicholas Lenssen, Flavin’s chapter
details
the future of wind, solar, and hydrogen power. While touting the gains
made by
the solar and wind industries, he projects that hydrogen will be the
fuel that
replaces natural gas. “Over time, solar and wind-derived hydrogen could
become
the foundation of a new global energy economy.”
He predicts that one of keys to that new economy will be the fuel
cell. Used
on the Gemini and Apollo space flights, the fuel cell turns hydrogen
and air
into oxygen, water and electricity. Flavin says that the fuel cell can
produce
electricity from hydrogen at an efficiency as high as 65percent. He
writes,
“Indeed, the fuel cell may one day be thought of as the silicon chip of
the
hydrogen economy.” Now being marketed by Houston-based Enron and United
Technologies, the fuel cell could be the machine that replaces the
internal
combustion engine.
The new State of the World also discusses the problems faced
by China.
“If recent growth patterns continue, China’s use of coal will double in
the
next 16 years and its consumption of grain will rise by 40 percent.”
Those
factors alone should be cause for concern for the rest of the world. As
noted
above, Population Action International is predicting a shortage of
arable land,
which could also mean a global grain shortage. But the authors of the
section
on China, Megan Ryan and Christopher Flavin, show that China can take
another
path. By embracing energy efficiency, farm land conservation, and fish
farming,
the authors believe China can reduce its demand for additional
resources. With
one-fifth of the world’s residents, the authors say that “one thing is
clear:
China simply will not be able to follow for long any of the development
paths
blazed to date. Its abundance of people, shortage of resources, and
collision
with the technologies and political philosophies of the 21st century
will force
the country to chart a new and different course.”
Those are just short bits from this fact-packed tome. Check it out.
MEETINGS, MEETINGS, MEETINGS: Next Friday, May 5, the Green
Building
Conference ’95 returns for a three-day stint. Always an interesting
event, this
meeting will feature a mini-film festival, a speech by green guru Ian
McHarg,
and dozens of other cool happenings. This event gets bigger every year
and this
year promises to be the most comprehensive to date. Discussion topics
include
the green lessons learned from building the new Whole Foods Market at
6th and
Lamar, energy efficient lighting, and green kitchens. The con-ference
runs
Friday through Sunday at Palmer Auditorium, and includes an exhibit
hall. The
cost is $50 for all three days, or $5 for just Saturday or Sunday. To
register,
or for more info, call Laurence Doxsey at 499-3504.
This article appears in May 5 • 1995 and May 5 • 1995 (Cover).