More criticism for Wall Street Journal op-ed

Posted on June 1, 2007 | Filed Under Dam Removal, Global Warming, Northwest, River Renewal 

Amy Kober
Northwest Outreach & Communications Director

CJR Magazine Curtis Brainard with the Columbia Journalism Review thoughtfully criticizes the recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece (subscription required) about dam removal by Shikha Dalmia.

First, there’s this:

… her attempt to cast this problem as a rebuke of the entire environmental movement is feeble and premature. In her lead paragraph Dalmia opens with this straw man: if Al Gore likes “hectoring Americans” about the environment so much, why hasn’t he “convinced his fellow greens to rethink” dam removal? Good Lord. What does Al Gore have to do with this?

And:

Dalmia, an analyst at the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank, criticizes environmentalists for having “rejected all attempts by PacifiCorp, the company that owns the dams, to take mitigation steps such as installing a $350 million fish ladder to create a salmon pathway.” Yeah, except that PacifiCorp is actually unsure about whether or not it wants to drop that kind of coin in order to renew its operating permit; instead, the company is thinking demolition.

And finally:

What is best, removing the dams or leaving them be? Who knows? This is a tough problem that addresses no less than a radical alteration of the western landscape and the way those states manage natural resources. To reduce it all to sheer liberal hypocrisy, as Dalmia has done, is either incredibly naïve or, more likely, disingenuous.

For our response to the Wall Street Journal piece, read Rebecca Wodder’s letter to the editor.

And, learn about our efforts to restore the Klamath and lower Snake rivers.

About this Post
Permalink | Trackback | | Print This Article |
Like it?   digg | hugg | del.icio.us | furl | reddit


Comments

Leave a Reply