I am not opposed to man's using nature to man's benefit, within the bounds of rational self interest (not violating property rights; and thinking and acting for long term goals, not just short term goals at the expense of the future). For example, I have no problem with the building of a dam, if the land it will affect belongs to the dam builder (and hopefully that person will take into account that the environment might be negatively affected by his damn and might negatively impact his future plans, but that is the problem of that person only).

But this article tells how the government messed up the environment (i.e., long term goals were not properly planned for, if at all) by building a dam, and now the government wants to interfere more to try to fix it: "Officials hope" that what they are doing will help. They (people with a "government" mindset) simply do not learn that there are unintended consequences when playing with a complex system. In this case, I'm not even talking about the free market - the environment is incredibly complex as well.

Of COURSE the government will screw it up. That is an obvious and irrefutable effect of the incentives. That having been said, I question the idea that "private property" can actually "solve" the problems. How much land is affected by a dam? What about the change in the outflow, the fisheries, the entire ecological balance? The effects of a dam are huge, and one as big as the one which drowned Glenn Canyon or create Lake Mead are incalculable. The funny thing is that nature will silt it all in and make man's feeble attempt at control a moot issue in probably less than a century, so all is not lost.

As to how to solve the issues of such projects, I haven't a clue, but I DO know that we don't have methods up to the task yet.

- NonE