Hydroelectric Dams Impacts

Isn’t impassable dams/hydro stations a huge issue for them?

I think you mean hydroelectric dams.

That ship has already sailed as most power producing dams have been around for long time. Removing them would destroy the (now natural) ecosystem they have created. Plus dams have way more benefits to us than the extremely clean energy they produce - not just store.

large dams do have pretty big environmental effects

Hydro makes major changes to the local ecosystem and kills a lot of wildlife that can't breathe water. Although p\enty of things can live in a dam they're not what was there before. It also makes major changes downstramPeople like to equivocate this with making entire countries uninhabitable or ongoing destruction.It also requires vast quantities of concrete (and thus has high one time emissions)We should still avoid it where we can now that we know better.

Dam failures have had orders of magnitude more impacts, are we calling hydro power a failure?

Good ongoing thread here regarding the environmental impact of dams: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27348870

Hydro also destroys ecosystems since it requires damming rivers and creating a reservoir. It's also quite risky, since when poorly maintained a structural collapse can kill thousands of people downstream. This has happened in China and California came really close to creating a man-made disaster only a few years ago.

> hasn't the hoover dam been up since the the '30s?There are tens of thousands of dams in the US alone, and most if not all are not built to the proportions of the Hoover Dam. If you would like to use the Hoover Dam - one of the largest dams in the world, holding back one of the largest man made reservoirs in the world as my counterexample, be my guest.My point wasn't that the dam will fail (although they do) - far from it: my point is that the dam, once put in, i

This is about knocking dams down, not putting them up :).