UPDATE:
Reader Neven sends along a reminder that there is more than one way to green a desert. I think I’ve posted this before, but worth more than one look.
UPDATED UPDATE:
Reader Marc McNaught writes me that he has been using the Sahara Forest technology at Sundrop Farms down under for some time.
Looks great, like a commercial really, but I think the EROEI sucks and it is way too dependent on complex technology. I’m also seeing too many ties and flashy cars. As soon as profit becomes too small, the plug will be pulled. This flick is obviously made to attract investors.
I personally prefer the permaculture version, as it revolves on self-empowerment, education and independence: Greening the Desert. Also watch the follow-up.
What do they do with all that salted up corragated cardboard?
Just using hard drinking water they clog fairly quickly.
The leaves on those pathetic cucumber vines are chlorotic. I suspect the food and water is a sideshow – they want to produce biofuel, which when burned, will only produce more toxic emissions.
Like these: https://www.dropbox.com/s/flovaf97xi3yxkr/leaf.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/awhafndv12hxjq2/leaves.jpg
I bet that salad in the dessert gets tossed.
Temper the skepticism. Give pilot projects a chance. Large scale developments will provide a portion of future sustainability solutions. Innovation at all scales is valid. This design addresses food, carbon neutral energy, fresh water and climate change without burning fossil fuels (once built). Although the development’s system is somewhat complex, the components are deployed or proven.
They even employed Michael Pawlyn, a bio-mimicry expert.
Big projects performed by big corporations for big profits for a few. Yeah, just what we need more of, cause we hardly have any of those going on.
The ideas are good ones: solar, solar water desalination, stopping desertification (not dessertification, btw, which I guess would be serving the salad ingredients a la mode) etc. But the idea of sending the products all across the world is unsustainable and destructive. LOCAL self-reliance, LOCAL organic permaculture, appropriate technology, political and economic democracy… those are the solutions that are going to get us out of the mess that global economies, multintional corporations, inequality, innappropriate technologies, absentee decision-making and physio-psychological dissociation have gotten us into.
oops, should be “multinational” not whatever that was.