Tonle Sap, Cambodia -- Beyond their artistry, what inspires awe about the temple complexes of the ancient Khmer Empire is their sheer scale -- not just Angkor Wat but also hundreds more, some 40 years in the building, with stone hauled from a hundred miles away, and tales of 40,000 elephants toiling for decades.
Religious fervor and slavery were part of how the ancient Khmers were able to devote so much manpower to building temples -- but only part. The elegance and craftsmanship of the relief panels required dedicated, skilled, and focused artisans. The Khmer kings had to be able to feed their entire population well on the labor of a relatively small portion of it -- and Tonle Sap lake's ecosystem made it possible, providing protein in the form of fish, and calories in the form of paddy rice. Every ancient Khmer artisan carving the sandstone devatas of the temple carvings was supported by the gifts made possible by a big slice of rich natural ecosystem, and it was those natural services above all that made the Khmer empire powerful, and Angkor possible.
Now, Cambodia still has only 13 million people -- so every citizen here still enjoys a fair chunk of the Ton Le Sap's bounty. But to the north lies China, with more than a billion, whose government announced Thursday that by 2030 it will have exploited all of its water supplies. One response is already in the works -- dam the Mekong river and, in the process, dismember the web of ecosystem services provided by both the river and the Tonle Sap.
Cambodia won't be able to stop China from taking what it needs. And China has already shown, by building the Three Gorges Dam, that it will risk long-term ecological disaster to avert short-term economic upheaval. It will require a new kind of economic and ecological cooperation to avoid more and more of these beggar-your-neighbor scenarios -- and a recognition that, as Tom Friedman said Sunday in the Times, "It's Too Late for Later."
Building that kind of new world order is the biggest challenge facing the next American President -- if we don't want the 21st century to be a catastrophic string of conflicts and wars over control of the Earth's rapidly diminishing biological commons and ecosystems.
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we cannot allow the deserts and other fragile ecosystems of this planet to be destroyed, and then call it "green." did we learn nothing from the rainforests, old-growth forests, coral reefs and polar ice caps? why on earth do people act like the wilderness is totally disposable, but that existing, affordable energy is impossible? brainwashing by utilities who don't want decentralized (independent) generation capacity. they want a total chokehold and our planet will pay the price, just like it is doing with the Fossil Fuels jerks.
please support URBAN conservation/renewable decentralized generation programs and oppose those which destroy wilderness. they are neither necessary nor environmentally sound...
Any article that quotes Tom "My head is flat" Friedman is suspect. China likely can make better use of the Mekong's water and it's electric power that the Cambodians.
Why the attack on Three Rivers. It is one of the few renewable energy projects on the planet. I am sure Friedman and Bush would prefer the Chinese use more oil instead of hydro power.
I do have to say--and do hate to say it--that the future of the world does not look at all bright---I am at that point in life that "there are more days behind me than in front of me.'
I am actually glad that is the case and I am also glad that I never had kids--with the way we live now---we have pretty much guaranteed that our progeny will not find a better world---there are lots of reasons for this being the case with greed being the primary reason and contrary to what the fictional character "Gordon Gecko" said about "Greed Being Good" --Greed is anything but good and until we can at the very least tamper greed down--our species is pretty well screwed.
GLOBAL. 6.6 billion people gotta eat, sleep, shower, and .... somewhere... let's see, 1,300
calories being the minimum to keep most people
alive and continuing today, times 6.6 billion
people + 1 gallon of fresh water each per day
(minimum), and let's see, 1kw energy/person,
yeah, we need to learn how to do this more
gooder...
But more to the point - This is exactly why China is in the long term every bit as dangerous to the Environment as is the USA. It's a waking monster.