What do you get when you take 600km of river, US$100 billion, 27 million cubic meters of concrete, 14 million people displaced, environmental devastation … just some of the facts about the world’s largest hydropower plant, the Three Gorges Dam in China.

Yangtze River

NASA: Yangtze River – May 2001, Bottom – March 2003

Even though it’s not yet fully functional the impact of the project is already apparent from space and truly an engineering marvel, if ethically and technically questionable. It’s a big price for a system which will only provide 3% of China’s power needs.

Related posts you might like:

  1. Wired World
  2. No time like the present…
  3. Natocrat
  4. The World