Hydropower remains cleanest solution to rural regions
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Hydroelectricity may not be a perfect answer, but is almost always the best one.
I think the biggest threat is human activity itself. Environmentalists' strategy of doing nothing to alter local residents' traditional lifestyle greatly threatens sustainable development, and this would worsen in the future, given the rural population is still growing.
We must transform these farmers to city residents. The construction of dams obviously offers us a shortcut.
It is a fallacy that hydroelectricity is developing too fast. Actually only less than 25 percent of China's hydropower capacity is being used. The unused capacity is offset by thermal power that consumes huge amounts of fossil fuels.
Our investigations show that most local residents actually desire migration and the utter change of their traditional lifestyle, which is characterized by poverty and despair. Most of China's southwestern parts are destitute and agriculturally unproductive.
So where does the money come from? Those areas are endowed with immense hydropower, and it is straightforward to take advantage of this.
Environmentalists claim that migrants are economically deprived. They are good at distorting the facts. Those unemployed migrants are all receiving benefits from the local governments. They are not rich yet, but much better off than before.
To achieve a balanced growth, investment is needed to utterly transform the local economy. It is very difficult for local governments to offer migrants a considerable amount of money to let them live in a carefree way.
Migration due to dam construction embodies the process of urbanization, during which the traditional agricultural economy becomes uncompetitive.
It is unreasonable to travesty this process for the sake of environmentalists' vanity.
Global Times reporter Wang Di compiled this article, based on an interview with Zhang Boting, an energy expert and the deputy general secretary of the China Society for Hydropower Engineering. wangdi@globaltimes.com.cn
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