Google goes green. Now it's time Google joined the movement to restore Celilo Falls.
RE < C.
This equation, which comes to us courtesy of Time Magazine’s current issue (Oct. 5), translates as “renewable energy costs less than coal.” It appears in an article about Bill Weihl, Google’s new "green-energy czar,” who is shown wrapped in a sheet of Mylar.
Weihl, one of three featured “Heroes of the Environment,” is the former MIT professor leading Google’s current campaign “to help make the world better.”
Already, Weihl has cut energy consumption in half at a Google data center, and installed an huge solar installation at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. The company is giving millions to clean-energy start-ups and funding in-house research.
All well and good, but still “one small step for a man.” I have a green-energy proposal for Google's data center in The Dalles that packs the potential of “a giant leap for mankind.”
Phase in an orderly switch from hydroelectric to wind-generated energy. Then lead the charge to decommission The Dalles Dam, create a free-flowing Columbia River between Bonneville and John Day dams, and restore the ancient Native American fishery at Celilo Falls.
Windmills are sprouting on the bluffs and slopes along the Columbia at a fantastic rate, doubling in number over the past summer -- a personal observation, not a hard fact, though my estimate was confirmed by a worker who helped construct this forest of green-energy giants.
We met by chance at the Stonehenge War Memorial, just east of Maryhill. In the course of our conversation, I asked, “Wouldn’t it be great if all these windmills one day replaced The Dalles Dam?” He said the powers-that-be would never let it happen. No matter how much energy they generated, windmills would forever play second fiddle to dams.
Another of the three “Heroes” is China’s Sherri Liao. “Chairman Mao preached that humanity must conquer nature,” we read before learning how Ms. Liao, a philosophy teacher who founded Global Village of Beijing, a thriving green-advocacy group, is quietly but effectively upsetting Mao’s applecart.
Google’s own potential “Giant Leap” would reverberate worldwide, on the streets of cities large and small, and in the halls of government.
Hydroelectric dams are throwbacks to Chairman Mao’s credo. The green-energy movement is beyond the control of those in government and industry who cling to the notion that Earth exists for man to exploit. The movement is growing from the ground up, and gaining momentum daily.
Certainly our collective intelligence will find ways to irrigate fields and move crops to market if The Dalles Dam disappears. And with a free-flowing Columbia, Celilo Falls again will serve as the river’s pump, heat regulator and oxygen source, giving new hope to the fading dream of restoring native salmon runs.
What will it be, Google? Small steps or giant leap?
Published as an op-ed article in OregonLive, online ancillary of The Oregonian.
I call for Google to phase in its conversion to wind power, recognizing both the added expense of wind power and its unreliability at the moment. This conversion might take years. The Bonneville Power Administration tells me funds from users of wind energy go to creating more wind power generation. If Google were to cut energy use in The Dalles, as it has elsewhere, the added cost would be offset by savings.
Nowhere in my article do I call for tearing down all dams serving the Northwest Power Grid ~ only The Dalles Dam. The irony of Google building a data center in The Dalles is not lost on me; on the contrary, I believe the irony makes my proposed "giant leap for mankind" all the more meaningful.
Farmers would not suffer. Engineers have proposed storing water on the high plateau during the winter, for use during the growing season. This would ensure that fish have an adequate stream flow (and cleaner, oxygenated water) when they migrate to their home streams to spawn. Irrigation alternatives would have to be in place before the dam came down.
A canal with locks still exists at Celilo, beneath the reservoir. It was used by tugs and barges before the dam; certainly it can be upgraded to handle modern barges.
I don't foresee the dam's removal until all economic and environmental issues have been resolved. It may not happen in my lifetime, but I like to think of my great-grandchildren sharing my experience as a five-year-old, standing in the mist, the rock shelf trembling beneath my feet, watching Native Americans lean from platforms and thrust dip-nets into the churn. I like to think of native salmon running as they did before the dams.
For those who think first of the "bottom line," imagine eco-tourists from every corner of the globe filling hotels and restaurants in The Dalles, more than making up for jobs lost at the dam. A portion of the dam might even be kept as a museum of natural and cultural history.
One negative argument after another falls before logic and innovative thinking. But some people have lost their ability to weigh all sides of an issue. The upside of restoring a free-flowing Columbia at Celilo and Long Narrows far outweighs the downside.
One day in the near future, when green-power is cost-effective and reliable, people will look back and wonder how detractors could have been so short-sighted.
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