🌎 Seaflooding
The Surprising Solution to Mitigate Climate Change, Create More Life, and Grow the Economy
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Sea levels might rise by one to two meters by the end of the century.
What if I told you there was a way to mitigate that, while creating new habitats and more life, growing the economy, and making money along the way?
Let’s call it seaflooding.
Do You Like the Mediterranean Today?
In The Zanclean Megaflood article, I explained how the Mediterranean was a series of picayune salty lakes until the basin was flooded from the Atlantic.
After learning about this, an architect dreamed up the concept of Atlantropa in the early 20th century: damming the Strait of Gibraltar to create massive amounts of hydroelectricity, while reducing the size of the Med to replace some sea surface with land surface.
The project never materialized because:
- It was extremely expensive
- It would take forever
- Nuclear energy promised an unending source of energy, which meant the hydro power didn’t seem worth the hassle
- How do you coordinate efforts among the many countries that border the sea?
Today, we should probably add other reasons.
One is that we now know that the bottom of the Mediterranean was a hellhole when it was dry: air pressure was much higher because the ground was so far below sea level, and the temperature would have been much higher than it is today. So the new lands would not necessarily be very fertile. In fact, they would probably be more desertic.
At the same time, there would be less moisture available on today’s exposed land, making the mediterranean shores even drier than they are now.
More importantly, geoengineering the world at this scale sounds preposterous to us now. We love the Mediterranean just the way it is. We love the wildlife that thrives around it, the economic opportunities, the sun, the holidays, the lifestyle… the life.
Reverting back to a salt desert sounds foolish.
We’re very happy that the Mediterranean flooded.
Should we create more…
