Most accounts of environmental crises pit the ôvillainö (people) against the ôheroö (nature). In Richard WhiteÆs (1995, p. ix) The Organic Machine, the author explores the interrelationship of the Columbia River and people in a new light, one where he posits the river as ôàan organic machine, as an energy system which, although modified by human inventions, maintains its natural, its æunmadeÆ qualities.ö This analysis will explore WhiteÆs unique theory, in order to demonstrate why the Columbia River is, indeed, an organic machine.
Whereas other authors who address waterway environmental crises often blame development, dam construction, dyking, logging, and other manmade impositions on nature, White provides a new environmentalism that encompasses pollution, environmental destruction, inorganic naturalness and other factors. WhiteÆs narrative extends from the days of the explorers and indigenous populations abundant along the Columbia River to contemporary hydroelectric projects and industrial fisheries in order to show how the riverÆs stock-in-trade, ôenergy,ö has been managed at different periods through history. Power struggles, different ideologies, and dramatic new methods of reshaping the flow of the ColumbiaÆs energy by those who have interacted with it throughout history have not ruined the river as much as changed it in WhiteÆs view. Different valuations from environmentalists to industrialists are what provide views of the Columbia in keeping with traditional environmentalism. White (1995), however, assesses these valuations and contends that the river is neither a natural phenomena or one triumphed over by human forces:
To say there should be thousands of Chinook and sockeye passing upriver on a given dayàis, perhaps, to miss the point. If this vere the old Columbia River system there should be salmon, but this is a different river. This new river produces carp
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