Dams, the Dust Bowl, and Dispossession: Climate Security through Hydropower Construction in the Early American West

Abstract

Our climate crisis poses twin challenges that may contribute to increased investment and reliance on hydropower. Meeting the Paris Climate Agreement requires that renewable energy must provide 65% of the world’s energy supply by 2050. Growing unpredictability in rainfall patterns also make advanced water management for agriculture and drinking water paramount to health and economic wellbeing.

To understand the possibilities and limitations of the growth of hydropower and large-scale environmental infrastructure projects, this article examines the cultural and political history of dam building in the North American West in the early 20th century. It takes the construction of the Bonneville Dam (1933-1937) as a case study to examine how environmental crises shape hydropower and infrastructure development writ large.

Employing the framework of “sociotechnical futures”, the article undertakes a comparative analysis of President Franklin Roosevelt’s speeches, Woody Guthrie’s Bonneville Power Administration-commissioned songs, and Chief Johnny Jackson’s oral history. It argues that politicians and cultural leaders leveraged narratives of environmental mismanagement from the devastation of the Dust Bowl to imagine federal dam-brought prosperity in the Pacific Northwest. In doing so, they developed clear images of the settler American who would benefit.

Analysing these perspectives can reveal how ideas about the Dust Bowl and regional identity transformed the physical landscape of the Columbia River Basin. Engaging with this history highlights how political contexts and environmental anxieties may legitimise infrastructure projects that advance dominant groups’ interests while harming the interests of others.