>>9252121
Cascading failure.
This is what happens when you build dams.
Don't build dams!
Instead, manage the river as a system, which includes dams, but which recognizes that any system with many components has to be robust enough to survive the failure of one component.
For example, drive around southern Ontario in Canada, from Peterborough to the Severn river area of Muskoka. You will find numerous lakes and small rivers with dams and lock systems. All of them are ROBUST CONCRETE structures and most have been in place for over half a century. And as you drive your rental car back to Toronto airport on the highways, when you go around a curve, take your hands off the wheel. Think about why the car continues to follow the highway staying in its lane, even though you are not steering it.
The answer is in ENGINEERING and in SYSTEMS THINKING.
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The Systems Approach and Its Enemies | C. West churchman | 1979
https://coevolving.com/blogs/index.php/archive/the-systems-approach-and-its-enemies-c-west-churchman-1979/
The Environmental Fallacy
The simplistic approach to systems design says that there is a clear and urgent necessity to do something about our systems, else we perish: we must create more resources of food and energy, we must reduce the pollution of air and water, we must reduce our population - or else no environment will sustain us. The other approach says that above all we must think through the consequences of any proposal for action, because otherwise the "clear and urgent necessity" will lead us down the pathway of disaster: we create more farm land and irretrievably destroy its future productivity, we eliminate pollution of waters by enacting laws that therefore prohibit industry in impoverished areas, we attempt to stop population growth by attacking deeply embedded religions and cultural values.