In China over the past fortnight, the waters have been rising in what will eventually be a 350-mile-long reservoir created by the Three Gorges Dam. When finished, the dam’s turbines will generate energy equivalent to 18 nuclear power plants. The dam will also improve navigation on the Yangtze and mitigate the flooding risk which has swept away entire towns and killed 300,000 people in the past century.
None of these noble aims, however, impresses the environmental pressure group Probe International, which has campaigned doggedly against the dam over the past few years. Not unreasonably, the organisation makes much of the million people who are being displaced by the dam, many of whom would rather remain put; though few Westerners, one suspects, would choose to live in the primitive homes which have been demolished rather than in the modern homes built to replace them.
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