Supersize

The fiftieth anniversary of the St. Lawrence Seaway provides an opportunity to reflect on the respective costs and benefits of thinking big. As a cooperative human endeavor, the Seaway ranks up with the pyramids, the Great Wall of China, or Machu Picchu. And it required a certain unstopability of purpose to accomplish such a task--a ruthless warlord, a demigod pharoah, or in the case of the Seaway, that creative/destructive genius Robert Moses who, in addition to his redrawing of the map of the North Country, invented the modern metropolis and its suburbs by mercilessly carving up the network of New York City neighborhoods.

One can't imagine the people of New York and Ontario ceding 64 square miles to be sunk for the bass, were it put to a referendum. To lose not only your home, but your town, is not a result to be had by local democratic process. Fifty years on, the feelings of the displaced are still raw, and yet the benefits are real as well: cheap power, new manufacturing, the opening of the Midwest to ocean trade, recreation and tourism destinations. And the cost, too, still rolls in--lost habitat, invasive species, erosion and water pollution.

At a time when we are facing big problems in the economy and the environment, thinking big is again in vogue. Whether small or big, the consequences will always include loss as well as gain. When you think big, they are just bigger.