Does it make sense to replace America’s aging dams with solar panels?

Dams are typically seen as the enemy by environmentalists, ever since Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite was flooded against the protests of John Muir. Ed Abbey painted dams as the enemy of his band of misfit ecoterrorists in The Monkey Wrench Gang.  The reasons why dams are unpopular among environmentalists are numerous. Some are horrified by the loss of beautiful places like Hetch Hetchy or Glen Canyon. Flooding behind a dam not only destroys wildlife habitat but sometimes covers important paleontological, geological or archaeological sites. Others …