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> ”The initiative combines solar-powered sand-blocking technology with extensive vegetation planting to stabilize the desert’s edges.” What sand-blocking tech is that? Does anyone know?
I wonder whether this is working, as far as preventing desertification goes. The project has critics. It might just the state declaring victory? Edit: apparently it’s controversial. Will China’s “green Great Wall” save it from encroaching sands? https://www.economist.com/china/2024/12/05/will-chinas-green... https://archive.is/FVimm
Yes, it's possible it will not deliver, but this seems to be classic way to combat desertification. Africa uses similar approach for Sahara.
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IMO Missippi shipping good example of lack of commitment. Low water levels already curtailing barge activity. It's a massive effort, but not really sufficient.
> not really sufficient Our barge use is crippled by the Jones Act, not water levels. Make it lucrative to ship by barge and the incentives will get the levels back up.
E: Like don't get me wrong, internal waterways is a geographic blessing for US, but it also always required enormous/expensive (army) engineering efforts to keep it viable for modern operations (larger barges etc). It's one of those case where terraforming/technology has outstripped natural capacity, but it's possible to augment geography to facilitate more technology, but right now augmentation efforts are not sufficient, not just to improve through put, but to maintain it, because geography can decline.
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I've sometimes wondered whether arid parts of the American Southwest could, through the right kind of permaculture interventions, support more biological carbon sequestration, more plant life, drive development of richer soil etc. But I suspect if you said "we're gonna use this big section of BLM land to incrementally try to keep water in the landscape, and introduce a sequence of plant species that can increase carb…
Probably a lot easier to just cut down all the trees in the midwest and throw them into a deep ocean trench every few years than to go up against the activation energy you will face converting a desert environment into something presumably more wet and less hot. This isn’t Arrakis.
Shouldn't you be able to see that on sattelit pictures?
TBH, I would like to know how much water it take to grow trees around the highway through middle of desert, but that is for another topic.
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IMO Missippi shipping good example of lack of commitment. Low water levels already curtailing barge activity. It's a massive effort, but not really sufficient.
> not really sufficient Our barge use is crippled by the Jones Act, not water levels. Make it lucrative to ship by barge and the incentives will get the levels back up.
""" It requires that all goods transported by water between U.S. ports be carried on ships that have been constructed in the United States and that fly the U.S. flag, are owned by U.S. citizens, and are crewed by U.S. citizens and U.S. permanent residents """
China may well have replaced the USSR as the latest bogeyman to keep attention away from whatever war crimes the US is currently supporting or committing, but all I can think about is the ~$10T spent on and millions of lives lost to the "War on Terror" and what could've been done with the money instead. I mean just look at the high speed rail transformation in 16 years [1]. China is not without its issues but neither…
>China is not without its issues That is a bit of an understatement, isn't it? https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/china/ch...
Yeah so, all the brown people that arrived in the United States as children when their parents "illegally" immigrated but have lived their entire adult lives here, have families here, have their jobs here and their cultural identity can literally only be American - also those "immigrants" (whose fate was also decided when I was is high school btw) we apparently are planning on the full scale removal of them from our society.
I've had people tell me "their kids won't save them anymore either" bc you kno, all the anchor babies. Literally happy about families being torn apart. That's a line the American people have crossed, not just our government.
Forced mass removal of minority population - where do you think they will end up if anything goes wrong between their arrest and deportation to somewhere that has no reason to claim them? I don't know how people can't see just how problematic this planning is.
Does this sound American? How high a horse will we ride after the bus loads of people whose lives we've upended for nothing?
We have a population replacement problem, er - well the world does really. People are exponentially valuable - the very definition of invaluable even. People provide for practically limitless potential with time and future generations considered. Money spent on immigrants is money very well spent if making money is the goal. Our goal is a color tho - well, more like a shade or an absence of color...
We have problems also. Our problems do not justify theirs and neither do their justify ours, that's not what I'm saying. We are all fucked up.
Rn tho - we should prolly just focus on our own stuff and thangs for the foreseeable future.
America 1st and whatnot.
Sry, I kno you didn't mean to overlook our issues with minorities rn and you were correct even but far too many people have shed tears to me about Ukraine and Israel and everywhere but here so much so that I just can't anymore.
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I've sometimes wondered whether arid parts of the American Southwest could, through the right kind of permaculture interventions, support more biological carbon sequestration, more plant life, drive development of richer soil etc. But I suspect if you said "we're gonna use this big section of BLM land to incrementally try to keep water in the landscape, and introduce a sequence of plant species that can increase carb…
That's kind of the point of democratic institutions, though: centralizing a lot of these directive powers leads to explosive efficiencies at the cost of liberty to, for example, surface objections as you illustrate. Or, more dramatically, throwing people who object into dark cells. That's how autocratic regimes can take on megaprojects without a lot of the red tape that leads to, for example, a paralytically slow rol…
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This isn’t the traditional thought process on this topic. Traditionally, it was thought that the ills of resource allocation under democracy were far outweighed by the automatic optimization of the free market. The Soviets did a lot to suggest that the free market was actually better than central planning. China is showing that with 21st century needs, technologies, and planning that may no longer be the case.
Looks like China is attempting a hybrid approach. Free market with the government intervening whenever and wherever it feels like. They still get some optimization and some otherwise-impossible-projects. I'd say the jury is still out on this strategy.
A caveat I'd add is that the Chinese government is subjective to the party. China's accomplishments are significant but they tend to be secondary to the political wellbeing of the CCP.
That wellbeing is secured though the harsh and thorough quashing of dissent.
I'd criticize China but CCP's most repressive aspects seem to be finding widespread appeal here in the US.