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IS IT WORTH IT? - BY KRYSTAL
The Amazon Rainforest is being destroyed at a rapid rate and a large part of this problem is due to the construction of the hydroelectric dams. Are these practically useless dams worth the thousands of acres of much-needed trees and the lives and homes of many animals and humans? The native tribes should at least be given rights in order to stay in their homes. The Brazilians have borrowed billions of dollars in order to build these machines and they don’t even all work properly. We continue to waste this land for a variety of things such as: hydroelectric dams, logging, cattle ranching, mining and oil extraction. If this was not going on, the rainforest could be used for many other things like oxygen, habitats for the animals and medicines for the world. The Amazon Rainforest provides approximately twenty percent of the worlds oxygen and is a home to millions of species. This is not something we should be destroying. Why are we building these contraptions, when twenty million people still do not have electricity? There are other ways to form electricity, so why don’t they quit wasting so much money on these dams? Hydroelectric dams are cheaper to produce energy once they have already been built. But surely there is some catch in there and there is. The dams can take years to be built and they cost tons of money in order to construct them. Also, the world banks have lent Brazil billions of dollars just to manufacture one hydroelectric dam. Shouldn’t they have checked whether it would even work properly once it was finished? Well they either didn’t check at all or if they did, they just didn’t do a good job of it. The acids in the water produced by the use of the dams make it impossible for the dam to work properly. Wasn’t that a good way to spend all that money? This is even more devastating since the majority of people in Brazil are still living in poverty. These dams are not only wasting money and trees; they are also forcing people out of their homes. This isn’t fair to the inhabitants of the forest. Some native tribes have already lost their culture from being taken from their initial homes. Also, some tribes are already becoming endangered because of the hydroelectric dams. A few that only have a small amount of their population left are the Kayapo, the Xingus, the Yanomamo and other tribes. This would not be if it were not for the dams. Another negative thing about the hydroelectric dams is that they are very bad for the environment. Even more so than just cutting down the trees, dams are one of the biggest producers of greenhouse gases. Since the water that they use is very stagnant, it makes the dams produce one of the very worst kinds of greenhouse gases. But it’s not just the hydroelectric dams that are producing the gases, people are burning the rainforest and that is causing large problems. It doesn’t make sense. As students, we are told to recycle paper to save the rainforest. But what’s even the point when they are just burning all the trees down anyway? We need those trees. So instead of burning them, why don’t they cut them down, so they will at least serve a greater purpose? The rainforest is already being destroyed by slash and burn, mining, cattle ranching, to the building of roads and logging. Surely we don’t want to destroy it anymore by building hydroelectric dams. But the Brazilian government figures that they need to in order to have electricity. But even when the first few dams didn’t all work properly, they continued to make more, and continued to waste more money. That was a big mistake. Especially since now they have to pay the banks back. Iron ore is about the only way Brazil can make a large amount of money soon, and that is how they are going to return the money back to the world. This is not a great idea. Either, considering iron ore is one of the biggest contributing factors to the destruction of the rainforest. It consumes approximately one hundred and sixty acres of forest each day in charcoal. But it seems to be that hydroelectric power and iron ore sort of help each other out. Iron ore needs the power from the hydroelectric dams, and hydroelectric dams need iron ore to pay off their debts. So they are basically working hand in hand to destroy the forest. The dams can also create large problems by flooding the forest. Since Brazil is planning on building up one hundred and twenty five dams by 2010, it could mean that it’s possible that they might flood up to more than sixty thousand acres of the rainforest. This could oblige about half a million people to move somewhere different. If they know these statistics, then why are they still planning on constructing all these dams? Without the rainforest, there would be no world. It provides us with so many things that we need, that it would be the biggest mistake to ruin it. We can’t live without oxygen and the rainforest alone provides one fifth of our oxygen. Also, the Amazon Basin has approximately twenty five percent of our water stored. The rainforest has about three thousand plants that have the potential to cure cancer. If we destroy the rainforest, then seventy percent of those would all be gone. Millions of animals and trees will become extinct if we continue to do damage to the rainforest. Before the Brazilians continue to manufacture more hydroelectric dams, they should at least look at what they are doing to their own people, the animals, the rainforest, and the entire world. Bibliography http://www.fwee.org/transmission.html http://www.iclei.org/EFACTS/HYDROELE.HTM http://hydroelectricity.hypermart.net/hdams.html http://people.howstuffworks.com/hydropower-plant.htm |
