Two little snippets that caught our eye. The first:
Percentage of annual net electricity generation by renewables in 1948: 32
Percentage of annual net electricity generation by renewables in 2005: 11
The main difference of course is the fall in the relative import of hydroelectric power.
Two months after the floods, while delivering the final order on a long-running case against the 330 megawatt Srinagar hydropower project on the Alaknanda, the supreme court issued a moratorium on dam construction in the state. It wanted an expert committee to investigate if dams in the state caused environmental degradation and exacerbated flooding and review 24 hydel projects on the Alaknanda and Bhagirati rivers that the wildlife institute of India had vetoed for causing irreparable ecological damage. These dams, with a combined capacity of 2,900 megawatts, need nearly 10,000 hectares (24,710 acres) of land and will submerge 3,600 hectares of forests.
Renewable energy is good we are told these days. But we are also told that renewable energy is not good. There's a certain desire that these people make up their dam minds.
Either climate change is the most severe threat to us all, in which case build the dams, or it isn't, in which case we can worry about a few thousand acres of forest. But one of other of these concerns really does need to have primacy.
Anything else would simply be a conversation of the dammed.