The Ecocentrists by Keith Makoto Woodhouse

“If there is a particular reason that so much environmental activism in the twentieth century sprang from the American desert, it is probably the character of industrial development there. Aridity defines not only the desert’s geographical identity but also its industrial infrastructure. Agriculture and human habitation in the American desert require water, and water requires large-scale engineering. The arid West is crisscrossed with aqueducts, siphons, and tunnels carrying water, with empty riverbeds where water used to be and full riverbeds where water never flowed before. Water in the West is impounded in hundreds of reservoirs and contained by thousands of dams. The energy to move all of that water, and to electrify the cities and farms that consume it, comes from generators within dams or from coal mined in desert mountains and fed to power plants throughout the region. The industrial base of human civilization is more apparent and glaring in the desert West, where it is thrown into relief by not only the stark, open space but also the monumental effort required to establish cities and towns in such an unforgiving environment.”

-Keith Makoto Woodhouse, 2018