Episode 41: Dam, History!
“Even when dams don’t fail, they have displaced millions across history and across the world—dams completely change how rivers work forever”
A conversation with historian Varsha Venkatasubramanian (UC Berkeley) about the history of dams in the Western United States and the world as it relates to foreign policy, policy history, and environmental movements. Released February 17, 2023.
guests on the show
Varsha Venkatasubramanian
Varsha is a historian who studies the history of dams in the Western United States and the World as it relates to foreign policy, policy history, environmental movements, and legal history. An expert on comparative history and politics—Varsha specifically examines dam development and US-India relations in the late twentieth century. Varsha also works on Native American water rights in the twentieth century, dam failures in the American west, and the history of American fascism.
Her webcast, Drinking with Historians, highlights key historic moments and themes in an approachable, fun manner. Learn more about Varsha Venkatasubramanian here and follow her @varsha_venkat_.
Transcript
Mallika Nocco
Welcome to Water Talk. Today we are talking about the history of dams. And I'm really interested and excited to just learn more about dams, dam construction, some of the infrastructural issues around dams. We've invited a dam historian and doctoral candidate from UC Berkeley to come join us and talk about this. Her name is Varsha Venkata. Subramanian faith, Sam, we were talking a little bit about dams A while ago, and that's what got me so "dam interested", I'm going to do it once or twice. I can't resist, I think we can. I think we should all get to do as many dam puns as we want today. That is our privilege, as water podcasters doing an episode on dams.
Faith, we were talking about it, and you were saying something about how just the conversation around dams has varied widely throughout your academic life? What did you mean by that? Can you say a little bit more about that?
Faith Kearns
Sure. I, you know, I started grad school in the late 90s. And I would say, you know, at that time, there was still a lot of animosity towards dams in general, right. And there was a lot of study around the biological impacts of dams in terms of fish, algae, temperatures, just all these downstream biological effects of dams. And then I found over time that that conversation seemed to have died off in a certain way, and maybe that's because I wasn't paying as much attention, but it really seems like particularly when we talk about California at the statewide level these days it's really much more about optimizing water storage, and also dam operations and dam safety and not quite as much discussion about the negative impacts of dams. Although we're also seeing, at the same time, a lot of discussion about decommissioning dams, and the impacts of older dams. And so I think it's just a really regionally variable conversation and really different than it was 20 or 30 years ago.
Sam Sandoval
And as Faith has mentioned, the conversation has changed from how to prevent, or how to fully evaluate the impacts of dams, while in other parts of the world they were still on a campaign of building dams right and left. 2017 is a friendly reminder that some of these are ticking bombs, right, that we have to pay attention, that we have to maintain them. And the amount of them that we have is smaller and large, that have to that we need to keep maintenance.
I think, to me, that is part of the conversation of today also: the bigger picture, I think the bigger picture of just for the sake of development, thinking that dams should be constructed. And she will provide a very good example of India that I think is very interesting.
Mallika Nocco
Yeah, that's one of the things that I was excited about is that Varsha has expertise on an international scale thinking in this comparative politics frame of the United States and the western US specifically as compared to India. I feel very excited about the international comparisons and the comparative politics aspect to Varsha's work and thinking about the United States in India together and how they've both approached dam construction and dam maintenance.
I always think about how the state of Punjab in India actually is pretty similar to California in terms of having a semi-arid climate, a lot of the crops that are grown there, and it's because of that we actually have a really large Punjabi-American farmer population in California. Sam and I both have a project where we're working with a Punjabi-American grower group so that is another reason too why it's kind of fun for me to think about. Also as an Indian American person I'm curious to learn more about the dam system there as well and just how it how it compares to California and the western US. So it would be a fantastic conversation. Do you have any other thoughts on dams, Faith and Sam, before we bring on our guest?
Sam Sandoval
I do. We typically focus on the environmental effects, but also, she will talk about the human settlements, all the settlements, all the people that are displaced and moved out. Again, while in other parts of the world they are doing that, or they deal with that, here in the United States we did the same. And once again, our friendly reminder that it was supposed to be a dam, the Auburn Dam above Folsom Lake, and because of the interest and the activism of the people they went all the way through to stop the construction of the dam, and that's why Folsom has modified their spill gates.
So anyway, that same displacement when it happens somewhere else we can say, "it can happen", but that should not be the case. Here we were experiencing that and when the dam is going to be built where it will flood your home, that’s when actually things will get closer to home.
Mallika Nocco
Welcome to Water Talk Varsha.
Varsha Venkatasubramanian
Hi, thanks so much for having me.
Mallika Nocco
I have to ask, how did you get interested in dams and water history?
Varsha Venkatasubramanian
It sort of happened by coincidence. I was taking a seminar in college my senior year, because I was bored of not taking history classes. And it was a seminar on the history of development with Nils Gilman. And he had one thing on the reading list. It was like an extra thing. It was like optional. And it was this article by David Lilienthal called, “Another Korea in the Making”. It's this article that he published in 1951 in Collier's Weekly magazine, it’s this old primary source. And I'm reading it and it's fascinating to me, because he's basically making the argument, this is when David Lilienthal, the former head of the Tennessee Valley Authority, visits India and Pakistan, and basically says, I think I know what I can do to solve your Kashmir issue. Why don't you just dam the Indus River?
So, you spent like a few pages basically detailing how the real issue here in the subcontinent is that India and Pakistan do not know how to share their water. He's completely forgotten the fact that there's religious and communal violence. And he says, I understand that there is this type of political communal violence, but I think if India and Pakistan figured out how to share the Indus Basin, that would all go away.
So he has this fascinating idea that democracy follows development. And I was baffled. I was bamboozled. I was excited. So, I bring this article to my current advisor at the time, and I was like, do you think I could write about dams in India for my dissertation when I go to grad school? And he was like, Yes, definitely. This is what you must do. This is it. And he hands me a copy of one of the best books ever written 'Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisner. And so, I had my first two acts, like jumps, into the dam world were David Lilienthal in India, and then learning about the Bureau of Reclamation in the American West.
Mallika Nocco
That's amazing. What a great story. I love the for the listeners who can't see our faces, as Varsha was describing the idea of democracy following development in India and Pakistan, our faces were pretty priceless, I think. But I was thinking when you said democracy follows development that's right up there with, "water follows the plow".
Varsha Venkatasubramanian
I agree. If people don't know David Lilienthal’s book that he published 1944, it's called Democracy on the March. It's called TVA: Democracy on the March.
Mallika Nocco
Well, the subtext to my asking you about how you got into dams and water history is, why do you think we should all care about dams?
Varsha Venkatasubramanian
And so basically, the important thing about dams is that it fundamentally changes how a river works. And so when you fundamentally change how a river works, you're affecting not just the people who live around that river and use that water, but also the fauna and the flora that are near that riverbed, the riverbed itself, the type of water that you get out of the river, and then that dam becomes, if you believe in the hybridization of nature, that dam becomes a part of nature.
Most environmental historians don't believe that humans are outside of nature anymore. But what's interesting is how dams have become this second nature along many rivers. And so, it's not just dams: you have dikes, you have canals. So, there's a lot of different types of water infrastructure that fundamentally change nature. But dams are the most visible one, right. So, if you're looking at a river like the Mississippi, you don't actually see how the levees have affected it over time because it's underwater. But if you're looking along the Columbia, or other rivers, you can see what a dam does to a river.
That's why I think people should care. In the US specifically, but also globally, dams have a major environmental effect. They actually store greenhouse gases. If you don't know the reservoirs actually store greenhouse gases. In the United States, they're failing it at miserable levels. There's an American Society of Engineer Report that comes out each year and there's a decent chunk of dams that are at high risk level, so they could fail. And globally, dams are difficult to maintain them, it costs a lot of money to actually build them, and then also cost a decent amount of money to keep maintaining them. So, dams do fail globally. And then even when they don't fail. They have displaced millions, across history and across the world. So, dams completely change how rivers work forever. And even decommissioning them cannot fully get us back to where we used to be.
And so that's a difficult question. That's why I like dams, and why you should care about them. Just by decommissioning a dam or getting rid of it doesn't always solve the problem. You know, maybe not building a dam might solve a problem and going another way might solve a problem. But there are people who just actually need water for irrigation, for drinking, for so many things, and so a reservoir full of water is sometimes necessary. But what’s difficult is actually doing the proper opportunity cost of, is this worth it to the people who will be displaced to the environment? To the climate? And is it worth it, to actually build this financially? And for some reason, so the last answer to the question is, why are dams interesting historically? In my opinion, they're proved wrong over and over again. But for some reason, they're like the Rasputin of infrastructure, they just never die. That's why I find it fascinating.
Sam Sandoval
Varsha, why also people should care is that many people in the West of the United States really depend on the water that is stored and managed, or mismanaged, and that regardless we have built these tools to try to improve the water supply. It has proven again and again that we just abuse some of these tools. We have tried to attack the symptom, not the problem. And by that, I mean, trying to create civilizations in the middle of the desert, and things that have been kind of going against nature for the sake that we can do it. The displacement of people and how policies and politics influence the construction of them is just impressive.
Varsha Venkatasubramanian
It's definitely something that if we had proceeded at a moderate pace we would not be in the situation that we are today. Let's take Los Angeles, for example, in Mark Reisner's book the fact that we proceeded at such a fast pace with so many different canals and dikes and dams in an attempt to basically bring water to a desert is what has landed us in the situation that we are today.
Mallika Nocco
So, Varsha, I love the visual imagery of dams as the Rasputin of infrastructure. That's really good.
So, you brought up dam failures, why do dams fail? And what can we as a society do to keep this from happening? I know you've done a lot of work, thinking about the National Dam Safety Program Act in 1996. How did that change the nature and the incidence of dam failures?
Varsha Venkatasubramanian
Yeah, so the main reason dams sort of fail is it depends on their construction, but as most people don't know, as of 2023, most of the dams in the United States are privately owned. They're no longer government owned. And even if they weren't government owned, the agencies that are in charge of maintaining their safety are spread out among many. There are four or five different agencies that are in charge of maintaining dam safety. And that's just that's federal agencies. There's also state agencies that don't really have the funding to keep to keep dams safe. So that's one of the main reasons dams sort of fail.
So if it's because the agencies like FERC as well as the US Army Corps of Engineers, they just don't really have the finances at the federal level to do the actual repairs. And the private companies who own these dams also don't have the money to do the repairs. So, dams fail on like an existential level, because over a while that concrete just wears down. They need to be constantly maintained. It's just not permanent. It's not something that, even though when it's built, like the St. Francis dam disaster, when the St. Francis dam was built, it's something that just looks permanent, and gives this like immense pride to the engineers of the dam, and then a couple of days later it just all comes crashing down.
So basically a decent chunk of dams are not built with the standards that civil engineers would like today. This national Dam Safety Program Act, signed into law in 1996, there's older versions of it, but this one tries to improve safety around dams by giving grants to state dam safety agencies. It helps them improve their regulatory programs. It also tries to enhance technical expertise around dams that are being built at the time or are being rehabilitated or repaired. And then it also has training programs for dam safety inspectors. And then finally it does something that you would think we would have earlier on in the 20th century: a national inventory of dams.
But even today, they first attempted this national inventory in the late 70s, after the big Teton Dam failure. It turns out a bunch of states which had dams were just like, we actually don't know how many dams we have. And they just shrug and move on. And the federal government was like, there's no way of counting them. And then they just move on until finally 96, they're like, yeah, we gotta count the dams, we have to figure out exactly how many there are. Because not all dams are as big as Hoover, right? Some are just smaller, some are embankment dams, some are tinier.
And then basically, the Safety Act gets funded by FEMA. And it's split between safety program assistance to the states to research as well as technical training, and expenses for FEMA. And then over the years since 1996, it has gotten more money, but it has gotten less attention, which I find saddening, especially because one of the articles I wrote a couple years ago, it was in 2020, when two dams in Michigan failed, and they were privately owned. And I found it really saddening because obviously a bunch of homes were destroyed. But also, it was completely avoidable, it would just cost a lot of money.
Faith Kearns
Varsha, it's so good to hear a historical perspective, because we're all coming from engineering, physical science, biological science backgrounds, and, just listening to you, I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about some of the tools and practices and data that you use as a historian.
Varsha Venkatasubramanian
Okay, so I am a really bad digital humanist, right. So, I'm not that great at coding or making graphs or things like that. But what I do try to use that's more STEM or math related is that I do try to look at the actual number of dams, the maps, and I'm trying to use sort of maps to think about dams from a global perspective, not just in the US and India. I also use maps of rivers themselves to figure out, what do I think changes after a dam is built? And then also just the numbers of people who are displaced, the numbers of people who are displaced by country by year, the numbers of dams that fail, where they fail, the amount of money that countries use, and how much they use by year. So, there's a lot of graphs associated with this.
But most of the types of practices I'm using are more qualitative. I use a lot of newspapers, and I love newspapers because I'm thinking specifically about how people at the time are talking about the dams that are being built or the water issues around them because I don't just write about dams, I also think about water rights, and gaining access to water. I also love using different types of government documents. Trying to use state documents as well as the federal government documents, as well as other agencies. And then the further you go back, the easier it is to look at how different levels of the federal government are talking about water issues. So, the Supreme Court versus the president versus the head of the Reclamation Service are talking differently about an issue at the same time.
And then how different countries are talking about it. So, looking specifically at India, trying to get access to state documents. If not state documents, then state newspapers, compared to the national conversation. Then also looking at oral histories, which, if you go to recent history, you can do oral history. So, the key thing about writing a water history, in my opinion, especially one that does have so much of its focus in the 20th century, is trying to get as many voices as possible.
That way you're not regurgitating, which isn't bad, but you're not regurgitating just one view of the national state level, which is the same old story. It's a great story, but it might not be the most accurate. This idea that, “The Tennessee Valley Authority is replicated across many global south countries and it worked out swimmingly. We all love the Tennessee Valley Authority,” it's great story. It's cute, but it might not be the only story out there.
Sam Sandoval
And perhaps I mean, as you're kind of seeing different sources. And you already mentioned some of those Mark Reisner and some others. Do you have a favorite water historian? Or a favorite a journalist?
Varsha Venkatasubramanian
I don't have a favorite journalist, I really should. But my favorite current author is Donald Worster. So, he's my favorite water historian and river historian of all time. He wrote Rivers of Empire, as well as other environmental histories that are very important. The Dust Bowl, which has nothing to do with water, but it sort of deconstructs the “rain will follow the plow” idea and sort of explains how obsessed we are with it.
The reason I love Rivers of Empire and Donald Worster is because one of the fundamental arguments that a lot of early environmental historians have is that capitalism is at the root of the problem, and Worster is no different. And he really digs deep like Reisner does, as to how the big businesses, agribusiness, sort of have this relationship with the federal government and the Bureau of Reclamation in the American West. And if not for this relationship, we would not have the imperial rivers that we have today. And so that's why I love Worster. And I like to think that they remember historians of the 90s and early 2000s, who are talking about capitalism. I'm trying to push one step forward to talk about neoliberalism. So, that's how I hope to sort of make my mark on environmental history. Moving a little bit forward in the story.
Mallika Nocco
I feel super confident that you are going to make a mark on environmental history. And you already are. So Varsha, you've done a deep critical dive into a particular US Supreme Court case that fundamentally changed Native American and Indigenous water rights in the 20th century. And that case, was called the Winters Decision, and it took place in 1908. What do you think every Californian should know about the Winters Decision?
Varsha Venkatasubramanian
So, Winters v. United States, it starts with a really funny story. Winters is actually Henry Winter, a white settler. And for some reason, his name has changed with an S at the end. Basically, it's a case that takes place in Montana on the Milk River. There's a reservation of Native Americans and upriver from them is a bunch of white settlers who have basically taken access to most of the water along the Milk River. And the reservation is on the verge of a drought. This is in, like, 1905, and the director of the reservation, the head of the reservation, even though he's the white man, sends a letter all the way to the US Attorney's Office in DC and says, “Hey, we've got an issue. A bunch of these people are stealing our water and Native Americans on the reservation, me as well, need water to live.”
And so, without really asking anybody in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or the Bureau of Reclamation, the US Attorney in charge decides to file suit. And he ends up winning in the Montana level and the ninth circuit level and the Supreme Court level. And what's interesting is he wins in an argument that he didn't even think to make. The Supreme Court, or the Ninth Circuit Court, makes it for him. And they basically make the argument that "Oh, Native Americans, when they signed a treaty with the federal government to make this reservation, they had a certain amount of implied rights in order to survive on the reservation." And one of those implied rights was access to water.
So, the Supreme Court says, "Yeah, Native Americans do have a reserved right to water," and thus began the Reserved Rights Doctrine. So the Reserved Rights Doctrine became known as the Winters Doctrine. What I find fascinating about this is it basically says that the federal government has the right to reserve water for any use on public lands, because it sort of owns that land. And so it begins with Native Americans, because Native Americans have that right to that water. And then it sort of changes into a law where the federal government has access to water that the state is not using or can't use, or that the federal government just wants because it's on public lands. So, it ends up becoming a way for the federal government to gain access to more water in the late 20th century, or in the later years of the 20th century.
Even though this right exists, Native Americans to this day are still fighting for access to clean water, as well as access to proper development. The massive amount of dam building that goes on, it doesn't really go on that much on Native American lands, even though they sometimes need it. So that's what I find interesting about the Winters Decision. And the one thing that Californians should know is a lot of our public lands, specifically the water rights to those public lands, they are in federal hands because of the Winters Decision.
I argue in this paper that I wrote that, if not for this Winters Decision, and specifically if not for the fact that the federal government had gained the paper rights or the "wet rights to water", there would have been no benefit to having this land access to the American West. The United States wasn't really a continental empire, until the federal government had access to the water as well as the land.
Mallika Nocco
I thought that was really interesting when I read that just the term wet rights is a really interesting term to me. How you can have rights to land, but without the wet rights, it's not very meaningful. So that definitely is an interesting takeaway.
So, you talked a little bit about some key differences between water policies in the Eastern and Western US. I was curious, because you have this international comparative politics frame in your work, so what are some of the key differences between dam policy in the United States and India?
Varsha Venkatasubramanian
So, I think, what's the key similarity is both in the US and India, they're dealing with other countries, as well as domestic issues. So, the US you have Mexico and Canada that you're not actually fighting with, but there are regular discussions about how to share that water. And in India, you're constantly dealing with Pakistan, or Bangladesh. And I'm not saying India is always being fair. But some of the key differences I would argue is just timing. The United States starts its era of big dam building a lot earlier. And India starts its era of dam building after independence. It has a massive irrigation system that it inherits from the British Empire, but in terms of modern technology, and modern dams, that mainly begins after India gains independence.
And I think the approaches are a little bit different. In the United States, there is a lot more private enterprise involved in building these dams. And in India, especially under Nehru, it is a much more of a statist effort. Even though in the US, the state is always involved. And as we know, from Worster, and any historian, it's never that there is a completely free market that the state is never involved in, in water or infrastructure. But in India, I would argue it's just a little bit more heavily involved, which makes it just slightly different.
And it also has a different type of teleology or theory around modernization. And India is trying to sort of combine this capitalist mode of development with this communist system of development that it gets from the Soviet Union. But the United States heavily relied on this capitalist mode. Which again, is a little bit ironic, because it's not as if the US or any other country is ever free of the market or free of the government. So those the main differences.
Mallika Nocco
One of my key takeaway points from today and talking to you is I don't think I realized how many of the dams in the US were privately owned or privately constructed. So, it's interesting then when you compare it to India to think about how much of a governmental effort it was in the dam construction in India.
You mentioned modernization. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you mean by modernization or modernization theory?
Varsha Venkatasubramanian
Yeah, first and foremost before being a dam historian, I am also a historian of foreign policy. And one of the things that fascinates me most going back to Lilienthal is that during the Cold War in the United States, the United States is really interested in one thing, the policy people are interested in one thing: pulling countries in the Global South that have just decolonized away from the Soviet Union.
And so, there's this person called Walt Whitman Rostow, he's this political scientist, theorist, whatever you want to call him, he has this idea that there's a system of social evolution for states, or specifically societies. And they develop along this teleological, social Darwinist scale, where they come from premodern, all the way to modern. And he argues that the United States has reached that modern society, and other countries can follow that same path.
And so that type of modernization theory is what inspires most of the foreign aid as well as foreign lending from the IMF and the World Bank, until, I would argue, the end of the Cold War. And basically, it's this idea that countries have to go through preset stages in order to reach this perfect stage of capitalism that the United States is in. And it's trying to offer this model of modernization as an opposition to the Soviet model of modernization, which is the Marxian story where you reach a certain stage, and you get to like late capitalism. And then finally, you're at the final stage: communism. The United States is trying to offer a different model of that, and that's what Rostow is trying to do.
And I argue specifically that the United States foreign policy makers try to impose that system of modernization theory, or those ideas of modernization theory, onto Global South countries like India, like Vietnam, like Brazil and other countries in Latin America, as well as a bunch of countries in Africa. But each of these countries have their own individual take on it. And even though I'm not an expert on other countries besides India and Pakistan, the way India embraces, as well as rejects, parts of modernization theory, are what's interesting to me.
And then finally what's interesting to me is, one would think that when the Cold War is coming to an end, because the Soviet Union is no longer that much of a threat, that this emphasis on status projects, and modernization theory, will sort of die down. But it doesn't die down. It just gets reborn, like this Greek Hydra monster, into something completely different. It latches on to other types of ideologies that are being developed in the 80s and early 90s, like neoliberalism and environmental sustainability. And so modernization theory is sort of reborn, and it is now in a different position. And it's still being used to highlight how the US is better than everybody else, sort of reductive to talk about it like that, but that's basically it. And that's why I find it interesting is because it is such an important tool of othering, other nations, as well as a such an important tool of defining why Americans think the US is so great, at least on a global scale.
Mallika Nocco
Yeah, the rebirth part that you mentioned is especially interesting thinking about being reborn in this sustainability frame. So that kind of lends us to the next topic, Faith. I think you were going to say something about climate change.
Faith Kearns
Yeah, obviously, Varsha climate change is this really big issue right now. And it's affecting water across the board, and certainly dam operations and thinking about dams. So, I'm just wondering, when you think about climate change futures, how does that hit as a historian? And what can we learn?
Varsha Venkatasubramanian
I am not an optimist, specifically when it comes to this type of climate change, talking about the future of climate change and how we deal with it, if we are referring to the past. But that's the best thing about the past. It cannot predict the future, right? If you just sort of tell us about how we might deal with certain things. And if you guys have read a novel called The Water Knife. The author's name is Paolo Bacigalupi.
Mallika Nocco
Varsha this is one of my favorite books. Yes, I have read that book.
Varsha Venkatasubramanian
It's one of my favorite books ever. And it's also a book that gives me nightmares because I love it so much, but it also scares me because the author, he read Mark Reisner's book and he's like, yeah, I got to write a novel about this. I got to write a novelization of the future that Marc Reisner has predicted. And sadly, I'm in the same boat as Marc Reisner and Paolo Bacigalupi and as well as Donald Worster, the way the United States is so reliant on its belief in individual enterprise being able to solve everything, but most importantly, individual property and business being the most important thing. That is what makes it so difficult to solve climate change. And that is what makes it so easy as well as difficult to build new dams, but also not maintain them.
Because dams are seen as not really cost effective. But more specifically, like the best bang for your buck, because it's so massive, it's so physical, and it's so permanent. But the actual business of dams is much less glamorous, it actually takes a lot of money to maintain that. And so specifically, the past of dams tells me that, because the United States is so heavily invested in maintaining private property, and private enterprise, and trying not to get the government involved, and basically, because we're so individualistic, we do not have the bones of collectivism enough to solve climate change.
Because we do not have the bones of collectivism enough to prevent dam failures, or to decommission the dams we should be decommissioning, or more importantly, to maybe stop building dams, because that's one of the most fascinating things to me. I said, it's the Rasputin. And I'll say it again. The World Bank, its financing, it's giving out loans to a bunch of dams in Global South countries in the 20th century. Then, the main project that I talked about sort of comes around. There's a massive protest. There's a World Commission on dams in 2000 [that] says, “These dams are a bad idea. They were horrible idea, you should build smaller dams, large dams that are taller than a certain number of feet [are a] horrible idea for the environment for displaced people for flooding. It's real bad.” And so, these people in these global south countries that are protesting these dams are so excited. They're like, hell yeah. Finally, somebody has supported our belief that these big dams are a bad thing. And so the World Bank, as well as a decent amount of countries, stepped back from dam building for a while. But then, as of a few years ago, we're up at it again. It just keeps coming back.
And so that's one of the major things that I think the past can tell us about the future of climate change: it is really hard to keep the knowledge that we have learned from our failures and stick to that. That's what I find most frustrating, which is why I'm very pessimistic about our climate change future. It's sad, but true. Yeah. Sorry, to end on a dark note.
Sam Sandoval
I actually think it's good. And in some of your articles you mentioned how the World Bank has also backpedaled because of all the environmental pressure. I think you also mentioned that the Bureau of Reclamation is rebranding because of the failures. And I don't know, I think we should be more conscious, if we are putting in charge the people that put us in trouble, to take us out of that trouble.
Varsha Venkatasubramanian
Yeah, that's what's so fascinating to me is that I initially saw that, because I wrote that article about the World Bank–that's the first thing I did in grad school. I was looking at the World Bank, and I made this cool connection between the rise of environmentalism and neoliberalism. And these protests, and the fact that then the World Bank has to completely do a brand change, and it rebrands itself, specifically when it comes to dams, it's talking specifically about it as a champion of environmental sustainability. And then I realized a couple years later, when I'm researching dam failures, the Bureau of Reclamation has to do the same thing domestically.
So, these institutions that are like cutting their teeth on liberalism and building projects like Teton and Hoover Dam, now basically they're on their hands and knees convincing the government, and other governments as well, in terms of the World Bank, that no, no, they are actually good. They actually have a plan. They also, more importantly, have a return on your profit, or a return on your investment. And I really think it is this business aspect, this obsession that we have since the early 90s that development, specifically harmful development, can be sustainable, that there is the possibility of being climate conscious and profitable. That's what's going to destroy us.
Really, it's sad, and it's impossible. But the fact that we cannot take profit out of the equation is what makes it so difficult to solve climate change. Even today, the Green New Deal that's being championed, even though it does not have a chance in heck of passing. I would love it to pass, but the core of the Green New Deal is, “don’t worry, we'll create jobs. Don't worry, it'll make money. Don't worry, it pays for itself.”
We shouldn't have to ask that it's the same thing with a bunch of policy issues, like universal health care, or a universal jobs program, or free college, or free pre-K. The question of, does it pay for itself? Or, does it make money? That shouldn't be the business of government, but it is the business of government.
Sam Sandoval
Again, just going to some of your publications, you mentioned that in some of these cases, it’s kind of a paradox, or what you have found that it is a paradox. So, the bureau who disregarded environmentalism, who disregarded tribal Native American water rights, and who displaced them, and now they're in the business of defending native water rights, or bringing the environmentalist portion into their projects, to be now, no longer a developer, but a manager.
So anyways, I think, for all our audience, it's good that you're bringing those positions and the historical perspective. We can think that some of these institutions were always good, but they have an interesting past.
So, Varsha, thanks for the conversation. What would you like our listeners to know about your work? And how can we support your work?
Varsha Venkatasubramanian
So, my work is still in the dissertation stage. But I think the main thing that I'd like people to know about it, is that I'm trying to compare these institutions that we just talked about, not just in the United States, but also in India. I'm looking at specifically what their original purpose is and, they might have been, “good” at some point, but how do they actually affect the environment and the people? And I think by this comparative history, we can shed more light on this eternal question that I have. Because it's seemingly, you think on the surface, it’s a simple answer, but it's actually really complicated. Why dams? Why do we keep building them? So that's the that's the core of my work, why do we keep building them?
There's no real way to support my work. But I do have a podcast as well. It's not a podcast, it's a webcast. It's called drinking with historians, you can just Google it. And if you Google it, you'll see all of our old episodes on YouTube. And basically, it's a weekly thing where we get together on one historian, or history adjacent scholar, sometimes we've had English scholars or classic scholars or Medievalists who aren't historians, and we get together with them and shoot the breeze about what their research is about, and why history is important. But the best thing is we do it over a glass of alcohol, which is optional.
The reason that I got into it is mainly because the pandemic was super isolating. But also, whiskey isn't whiskey if it doesn't have water. And so, I read one of the most heartbreaking things, ages ago, it was a news article ages ago, that the quality of water is changing in Scotland. And since the quality of water is changing, the quality of the soil is changing. So, the scotch, it won't taste the same! It'll just never taste the same again. If we keep messing with our water, which is the real reason we are all water scholars, people, we keep messing with our water, we won't have cotch and 20 years, right? My Lagavulin 16 won't taste the same. So, if there's one thing you can pull from my work as to why water is important, not just dams, it affects how we make all of our alcohol. Your beer will not taste the same. Your rum won't taste the same. Vodka won't taste the same.
Mallika Nocco
So, I'm a whiskey drinker too, as I think I mentioned to you before we started recording. I feel like we got to ask the whiskey question now. So, what is your favorite whiskey that's easy for you to obtain? And what's like your dream whiskey that if you could get a bottle of something, what would it be?
Varsha Venkatasubramanian
The easiest whiskey for me to obtain has to be this Laphroaig 10. It's the first Scotch I ever bought myself. And I bought it because of an ex-boyfriend. He said he liked it. And I was trying to impress him at the time, but then the relationship didn't work out. But I still had this bottle of scotch. And I was just like trying to get into whiskey at that point–I was still only drinking Jameson. And it's now one of my favorite bottles and it's easily accessible. Everyone, go try it. The only disclaimer is it is very peaty. So if you don't like the charcoaly smokiness of a scotch, don't get the Laphroaig 10. And then my dream bottle, I actually own my dream bottle, it took me a long time to find, it's called Elmer T. Lee. And I was in DC for a summer, and I heard about this bottle, and basically it's a bottle, because of international supply chains and probably water issues, it used to cost $40 a pop and now it costs like $200 something!
Mallika Nocco
It used to cost $25. Now I'm dating myself. Hahaha.
Varsha Venkatasubramanian
I hate being a millennial so much. Mainly, I think the main thing I hate about being a whiskey drinker because, one, it's so good that you can't really stop, you love it, but the reason is, is because for some reason, it's gotten really fashionable to like, ship this whiskey out of the US. There's this international chain, which I find interesting, but it really limits the number of bottles that people who are actually from that country or that region can get. There are some bourbons that are from Kentucky that people in Kentucky have never had. And that's actually like, if you want to support my second work, you can go to my Twitter and follow me and like hear me talk about this.
My dream second book, so I don't have a dream whiskey, but my dream second book is a global history of brown liquor. I would begin with scotch, and then I would go to rum and bourbon in the Americas. And then I would go to Canadian whiskey and the development of bourbon laws in the United States, specifically the regulation of what is a bourbon and bourbon is now only American, as well as whiskey production in every single country. There is a French whiskey I love. There's an Indian whiskey I love. Obviously Japanese whiskey is massive. Mexico makes a corn whiskey. So the global history of brown liquor. Oh, it would be a great book.
Mallika Nocco
I would read that. That would be like a wonderful book to have on the table.
Varsha Venkatasubramanian
Yeah, there will definitely be a big section on the quality of water and how it affects it.
Mallika Nocco
That's amazing. Well, thank you so much. And as Varsha mentioned, 'Drinking with Historians', right, that's what it's called 'Drinking with Historians'. It's a webcast, please, please give it a listen. I know we all will.