World Island

Was watching one of those National Geographic Channel doco's before on Megastructures.

This one was about the construction and development of another artificial "island" resort complex built specifically for the tourist market...the very wealthy tourist market... off the coast of Dubai. Similar to The Palm island resort built at vast expense a few years ago.

Years ago this sort of thing would have excited me no end. I'd have been awed by the scale and complexity and the sheer "genius" behind the concept.

Now my heart is filled with concern and dismay that human beings yet again just do not get it!

We keep pillaging and ripping nature apart all for the sake of providing that which only a very small percentage of the worlds population will be able to actually use.

From the rocks needed to reshape the entire coastline and to create an artificial reef around the structure so that the violent and sudden storm surges don't "wreck" the island sanctuaries inside the circle; to the special marine quality sand that was required to make the islands themselves - how MUCH of nature did the very wealthy Shah have to destroy in order to make this altar to the tourism dollar?

Apparently... it was "only" a mere US Fifteen Billion dollars worth!

How idiotic are we to assume that we can keep doing stuff like this?

The potential of changing all manner of ecosystems, like ocean currents, marine biology, water quality is yet unknown for such strategies....but can we afford NOT to know them?

What IF merely redirecting the force of the oceans power onto the coast of these Arab nations changes the patterns for weather and ocean currents so that we have yet more drought, more cataclysmic monsoonal rains and mud-slides, more erratic and changeable conditions around the world that affect food production and poverty?

What IF taking rocks from one place creates a bewildering array of biological and ecological "conditions" within the place where those rocks had thus far spent aeons, that literally caused the onset of other bewildering B & E conditions like the fall of dominoes?

What IF the world economy crashes in the next decade thereby eliminating or at least significantly reducing that expected influx of money into Dubai's coffers? Who will pay then?

In my youthful naiveté I would have thought this project a wonderful thing. With maturity and wisdom, I am beginning to wonder if mankind will EVER learn that we cannot keep messing with nature just for the sake of it!