by Beth Gray

The growing concern over climate change has led many companies to consider how to alter their own practices in order to mitigate their carbon emissions.  Several large corporations have taken significant steps toward assessing and taking steps to lessen their environmental impact.  Walmart, for example, has a very well-developed sustainability initiative and has a page on their corporate website devoted to tracking how the company is doing in its attempt to have a less negative impact on the environment.  General Electric also has a sustainability initiative and publishes an annual sustainability report to track the company’s progress in achieving a greener future.  Nearly 700 institutions of higher education (including American Public University System) have also pledged to assess their carbon footprints through signing the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) and take dramatic measures toward eventually achieving carbon neutrality.  Read the rest of this entry »

Images of the Three Gorges Dam from Nasa's Earth Observatory Website.

China’s Three Gorges Dam project is marred in controversy and serves as an example of man’s attempt to harness nature and nature’s stubborn resistance.  Officially approved in 1992 by the Chinese government, the project was originally conceived by China’s most famous Nationalist leader, Sun Yat-sen, decades earlier in 1919.  The project is intended to harness the power of the unruly Yangtze River which in the last 2,000 years has flooded the towns and villages that rest on its banks more than 1,000 times.  Several of these floods have caused tremendous loss of life.  Perhaps the most significant of these floods occurred in 1931 when more than 300,000 lost their lives in the cities of Nanjing and Wuhan and another 40,000,000 were left homeless.  While the Yangtze’s flooding has caused much death and destruction, the Chinese have recognized that there may be value in the river’s power.

The Chinese government sees great potential in using the river as a major source of renewable power for a nation that is growing in both population and energy dependence.  The Dam, once completed, would generate 18,000 megawatts of power, more than eight times that of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River.  The project which has been estimated to cost some $24 billion has created tremendous controversy for several reasons, however.  Human rights activists, for example, have voiced concerns over the required relocation of entire villages and towns.  Scientific American reported in an article that the Chinese government had ordered the relocation of “some 1.2 million people in two cities and 116 towns clustered on the banks of the Yangtze.”  Though promised fair compensation for their land, many of those evacuated have reported that they have been offered as little as 50 yuan, or $7 a month, as compensation. 

Besides the toll the project is taking on the immediate lives of the individuals living in the area, there are extensive and significant environmental concerns associated with the project.  Though the project was eventually approved, environmentalists inside and outside of China raised concerns that the “Three Gorges Dam…had the potential of becoming one of China’s biggest environmental nightmares.”  Though Chinese officials have previously denied any environmental fallout from the project, some are beginning to realize that recent events and environmental phenomena are significantly linked to the Three Gorges Dam. 

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