why do environmentalists not like dams?

They don't like it when people take The Lord's name in vain. No one has the authority to Damn anyone expect God Himself. They are saving souls. No damnimg of anyone. These environmentalists are saving souls when they are blowing up that dam.

Generalizations never make for good arguments.

I wonder if you are willfully ignorant. In case you are not, I will explain to you things I've learned over 10 years ago, but let me tell you that Google search is your friend. They don't "like" dams because when dams are built, they impact a large area and negatively affect the local environment. This is caused by the permanent flooding of the area, disturbing of the behavior of the animals, trapping of fishes and others animals inside the structure of the dam, etc. It's good that someone hates capitalism and infinite exponential growth of the economy, so that people like you don't have to breath toxic levels of carbon monoxide and eat pesticides for dinner. Go live in China and tell me how it feels like to live in a place where they don't give two *beep* about the environment.

Start with the destruction of salmon runs. Food security for thousands of people, gone.

What a load of rubbish. You don't know the first thing about environmentalists, who are widely varied in their beliefs.

Fox News makes people like you into unthinking drones.

The answer to the op's question has nothing to do with "not liking people". That's complete nonsense.

Dams disrupt a large portion of the surrounding ecosystem when they are built. They turn natural rivers into unnatural massive lakes almost overnight. The movie even shows the aftermath of the dam being built. Remember all those dead trees sitting in the lake as they drove past on the boat? That was damage the dam had done. That's just one good reason why dams aren't popular with many people.

@American1

I'm gonna ago out on a limb here. You probably think Obama is a socialist (despite the fact that he has been way too friendly with big business or my tastes), don't you. Just a hunch.

WRONG they just think that animals should have some liberties too. Including fishes, which are intelligent thinking beings.

[deleted]

^^LISTEN TO THIS GUY^^

That is the answer you're looking for, everyone else is just a bunch of morons. I am an environmentalist myself, but I don't see the point in destroying things that could potentially harm the environment more to either make a point or try to help the environment.

I generally agree but:

- a lot smaller and older dams don't have fish ladders because no one cared at the time of the construction or because routing the water around the turbines would "cost" too much water/money. And these ladders work better with some animals than with others.

- while flood control is favorable to humans, it can change the river. Some ecosystems around the river have to be flooded sometimes or they will be lost.

Finding a viable compromise is hard and requires tight regulation or everything that can't be monetised will die.

because as howard bloom says, these people are eco nihilists. The environment is their new religion and so they don't have a realistic understanding of it, or assessement of it, they aren't concerned with practical realities, which is why german greens can force the closures of nuclear power plants when that will just force them to rely on more carbon, and they just look at the example of france which gets most of its electrical power from nuclear and just ignore the facts they see, all the while wailing about climate change....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmKJW2Sfhi4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkOVfGudYWw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AQ96NSrXM0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnDpZot3ov8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdFczP76ZP4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFyzujd05ZQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLqG7XEF3T0

Eco nihilists want a garden of eden, and don't understand how amoral and destructive nature is to herself, and how natural that state of self destruction is. Ice ages aren't a way for nature to preserve its self, its a cycle with no morality. And these people won't acknowledge that humanity is part of nature. So our changes to the environment are in fact natural. They don't understand that sometimes you have to sacrifice something to preserve other things, we have national forests, but we also have a whole lot of farmland to feed us, all that farmland could be natural habitat, but we have to use it for food, this is a necessary sacrifice, sometimes a dam is a good necessary sacrifice because its the one reliable source of base load green energy and can prevent natural disasters like floods.

I sometimes think the Corp of Engineers won't stop until every creek in America has a dam. It keeps them employed. Meanwhile old dams, some made of earth and wood, are crumbling. They would be doing a better service fixing or replacing the old ones rather than building more new ones. Look what happened to New Orleans when the levees failed.

The same for the highway systems. Those huge double trailor rigs are ruining the highways with overweight trucks. How about repairing what we have rather than double decking highways in major cities for even more cars.


I don't know everything. Neither does anyone else

They are called "radicals". Any extremity is bad for you AND others.