Our biggest challenge: Lack of imagination.
In China, scientists have turned vast swathes of arid land into a lush oasis. Now a team of maverick "holistic engineers" engineers want to do the same to the Sinai.
There is no better mechanism for removing carbon dioxide from the nature, but in the past 5,000 years, human activity has reduced the Earth's total biomass by an estimated 50%, and destroyed or degraded 70% of the world's forests.
Van der Hoeven is a co-founder of the Weather Makers, a Dutch firm of “holistic engineers” with a plan to regreen the Sinai peninsula, the small triangle of land that connects Egypt to Asia. Within a couple of decades, the Weather Makers believe, the Sinai could be transformed from a hot, dry, barren desert into a green haven teeming with life: forests, wetlands, farming land, wild flora and fauna. A regreened Sinai would alter local weather patterns and even change the direction of the winds, bringing more rain, the Weather Makers believe – hence their name.
Let us take care of and save our forests and their inhabitants, let us not alter the course of millions of lives. Nature provides us with a thousand things and we in gratitude must take care of it.
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