Yangtze River Debate

Hello, I’m Lu Wen. I live in a village near the Yangtze River. A village that’s about to be destroyed. If this dam is created, 13 cities, 140 towns, and over 1,300 villages will be covered in water. Including mine. Lost forever under the water. And it’s not about the villages and cities and towns. It’s about the 1.5 million people in them. People like me. We’ll have to leave our homes and travel to a place we’ve never been before. We’ll have to start all over. All our family tradition, our family history, all the things we hold dear, will be left behind. If we build this dam.

You may not think my argument should include the impact this will have on nature, but I’d disagree. Our lives, and the lives or our ancestors, has always been connected to the Yangtze. 265 billion gallons of raw sewage. That’s how much gets dumped into the Yangtze per year. Usually, it floats out to the ocean. But if this dam is built, it will pile up in our beautiful river. In short, we’d be living next to a rotting, stinking compost heap. All the fish would die. And if the fish go, the birds go; what else would they have to eat. And insects cant breed in such polluted water.

Oh, and then there’s a small problem that the dam might break. I’ll leave the details to the people who know what they’re talking about, but if this dam breaks, the losses would be devastating. Devastating to our homes, devastating to our lives.

I’m not going to tell you to vote against this dam, for I believe everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but I will ask you some questions. Is it worth it? Is that new source of power worth it? There are other ways to receive power, but are there any ways to “receive” life. What’s more important?

So I will ask you once again, is it worth our homes? Is it worth the animals? Is it worth our livelihoods? Is it worth our culture? Is it worth that risk? Is it worth our lives?