Paradise (Yangtze)

Daddy, won’t you take me, back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the green river, where Paradise lay?
Well, I’m sorry, my son, but you’re too late in asking
Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.


-John Prine

The Yangtze is full of coal barges – loaded going upstream, empty on the return. The Three Gorges Dam was projected to produce 15 % of China’s energy requirements; present estimate is 1%, not because the hydroelectric generation has fallen below projections, but because demand has so exploded. So there will be more dams built, further upstream near Tibet, where the population, if not the ecological, effects will be lesser.

In the meantime, the mountains keep filling the coal barges.