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We Should Embrace the Cleaner, Greener Technologies of the 21st Century by Reed Burkholder The Oregonian, December 10, 2011

In your editorial on Judge James Redden Dec. 6 you mentioned the four lower Snake dams as being electricity producers "with no greenhouse gas emissions." This comment might have carried weight 15 years ago when the chief alternatives to dams were coal-fired and natural-gas-fired power plants.

But we now have wind turbines, which do not produce air pollution, and we have electricity-producing solar panels, which do not produce greenhouse gas emissions. In other places in the world, solar panels are being installed at a rapid rate, for example in Germany, where last year 7,400 megawatts were installed.

Wind and solar technologies are greener than dams. Their external costs are low compared to river-killing, salmon-destroying, treaty-breaking dams.

We should embrace the cleaner, greener technologies of the 21st century and remove dams when necessary to improve the health of rivers and salmon runs.

Related Pages:
Judge of the River by Editorial Board, The Oregonian, 12/5/11
The State of Washington Appears to Have Come to a Cynical Conclusion by Mary Lynn Gregson, The Oregonian, December 10, 2011
Minimum Recovery Goals for Wild Salmon is Abysmal by Jennifer Siler, The Oregonian, December 10, 2011