But Greenpeace questions the official forecasts of how much energy will be generated and says Brazil's dash for hydropower on the Tapajós is a potentially disastrous ecological and economic mistake.
Our accounting mistake is wreaking ecological and economic damage across the U.S. and the world.
"We've seen it as an improvement to make homes more insulated, but maybe that's a mistake from the standpoint of ecological diversity," he said.
And while prevention surely would have been cheaper than restoration, not restoring the Everglades and preventing further ecological loss will be a bigger economic mistake.
That ecological absurdity is implicit in the widespread, but deeply mistaken, acceptance of that position for the root.
In his jeremiad, "Collapse", Jared Diamond described Easter Island's story as "the closest approximation that we have to an ecological disaster unfolding in complete isolation".Yet it would be a mistake to place too much weight on this tale.
Some of the differences reflect adaptation of the basic concept to very different ecological, socioeconomic, or institutional conditions; others reflect poor design, due either to mistakes or to the need to accommodate political pressures.
As minor as the small mistake that turned the BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico into an ecological and economic disaster.
Donors need to acknowledge that ecological management requires a strong state, and that governments need to be allowed to learn from their mistakes.
