Cracked: The Future of Dams in a Hot, Chaotic World

by Steven Hawley, 2023. Hardcover, 320 pages. The ugly truth about dams is about to be revealed.During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the whole messy truth about the legacy of last century’s big dam-building binge has come to light. What started out as an arguably good government project has drifted oceans away from that original virtuous intent. Governments plugged the nation’s rivers in a misguided attempt to turn them into revenue streams. Water control projects’ main legacy will be one of needless ecological destruction, fostering a host of unnecessary injustices.The estimated 800,000 dams in the world can’t be blamed for destroying the Earth’s entire biological inheritance, but they play an outsized role in that destruction. Cracked: The Future of Dams in a Hot, Crazy World is a kind of speed date with the history of water control—its dams, diversions and canals, and just as importantly, the politics and power that evolved with them. Examples from the Americ