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>Fascinating video, but still it worries me how sustainable this is. What was shown in the video looks like a "mickey mouse" operation, akin to a local tree pl

>Fascinating video, but still it worries me how sustainable this is. What was shown in the video looks like a "mickey mouse" operation, akin to a local tree planting effort to combat climate change. For this to make any difference you can't have people digging "half-moons" at a rate of 1 person/1 half-moon/1 day - that does not scale in any meaningful way. You need to do this kind of project at an industrial scale, with large amounts of heavy machinery and thousands of skilled professional workers - especially since they are discussing creating a "Green Wall" across thousands of kilometers at a width of hundreds of kilometers.

legitster 3y ago
Yeah, I suspect that if the UN is actually serious about a Green Wall in the near future, they are engaging in mass industrialized planting. But it's not very expensive to have some marginal community projects here and there
bluGill 3y ago
There is plenty of labor in Africa, that scales very well. Just give the people reason to keep trees and they will plant and water them. There are many local advantages to trees so it isn't hard to get locals to take care of them with small incentives.
silverquiet 3y ago
If the Titanic is going down, it's going down, but if rearranging the deck chairs gives you something to do to relieve the anxiety, then I guess you might as well (my life may resemble this particular metaphor). I read William Langewiesche's travelogue where he crossed the Sahara overland after being a pilot who flew over for a few years. He said that the locals are rather fatalistic about living in such a massive and unforgiving place (people frequently die there); they say that when god decides it's your time, then it's your time. Langewiesche added that if you don't believe in god, then you can replace that with "The Sahara" and it still works quite well. I cannot imagine that there is much humans can do to hold back the desert. I'm quite sure that the only thing that would matter, a rapid drawdown of carbon emissions, is not possible at this point. I know it sucks, sorry.
- autoexec 3y ago
  Yeah, the video pretty much says outright that this is a delay tactic to keep the poors from storming into the cities and overwhelming them. Ultimately these people, and even those in the cities, will likely end up as climate refugees and need to relocate elsewhere. Much of the western US is also facing a growing desertification problem and dust and dust storms have been increasing. On the plus side, all the increased atmospheric dust has a cooling effect on the planet.
- dumbomon 3y ago
  Wait is there direct correlation between emissions and the expansion of the Sahara? My understanding was it started forming way before the European Industrial Revolution (any literature on topic would be awesome)
autoexec 3y ago
> you can't have people digging "half-moons" at a rate of 1 person/1 half-moon/1 day - that does not scale in any meaningful way. It'll get harder to maintain that pace as heat increases too. There'll be fewer and fewer hours that people can work outside. Rising temperatures will bring more heat-related illnesses and injuries. Considering the amount of ground they want to cover bringing in machinery to speed things up does sound like a good idea.
- bluGill 3y ago
  You don't need to dig them constantly. In a few years your village has enough, and now you just need to maintain them which takes less time and so can be done in the cooler parts of the day. And these green places will be cooler than the desert so even in the heat of the day the whole is cooler. Of course as the village population grows you send the "young men" out to the edge and have them dig a few more half-moons at a rate of one/day. However they are building next to previous green areas which are already lowering the local temperature, and if sometimes it takes 2 days to build one - who cares, there is no hurry.
  - macspoofing 3y ago
    If you want to treat this as a nice community project, akin to a community garden - great! Just don't think that this makes ANY difference on the macro scale of solving the encroachment of the Sahara, in the same way that a set of community garden initiatives would not solve, in any way, the problem of feeding a huge urban population. For both those things, you need things done at a massive industrial scale. If you want to feed a largely urbanized population of 350 million, you need industrial-scale agriculture, backed by a massive transport and distribution network. If you want to hold back the Sahara by creating a green wall spanning thousands of kilometres, and hundreds of kilometres deep, that is likewise a massive industrial undertaking. >Of course as the village population grows you send the "young men" out to the edge and have them dig a few more half-moons at a rate of one/day. Uh huh - because that's what young men want to do, dig ditches for no wage or subsistence-level wage. What's going to happen is those who can, will simply leave.
girafffe_i 3y ago
Or utilize metric tonnes of cheap labor.
nickserv 3y ago
The idea here is to do things in a sustainable way for the local population. What you're describing is the exact opposite.

legitster 3y ago

Yeah, I suspect that if the UN is actually serious about a Green Wall in the near future, they are engaging in mass industrialized planting. But it's not very expensive to have some marginal community projects here and there

bluGill 3y ago

There is plenty of labor in Africa, that scales very well. Just give the people reason to keep trees and they will plant and water them. There are many local advantages to trees so it isn't hard to get locals to take care of them with small incentives.

silverquiet 3y ago

If the Titanic is going down, it's going down, but if rearranging the deck chairs gives you something to do to relieve the anxiety, then I guess you might as well (my life may resemble this particular metaphor). I read William Langewiesche's travelogue where he crossed the Sahara overland after being a pilot who flew over for a few years. He said that the locals are rather fatalistic about living in such a massive and unforgiving place (people frequently die there); they say that when god decides it's your time, then it's your time. Langewiesche added that if you don't believe in god, then you can replace that with "The Sahara" and it still works quite well. I cannot imagine that there is much humans can do to hold back the desert. I'm quite sure that the only thing that would matter, a rapid drawdown of carbon emissions, is not possible at this point. I know it sucks, sorry.

autoexec 3y ago
Yeah, the video pretty much says outright that this is a delay tactic to keep the poors from storming into the cities and overwhelming them. Ultimately these people, and even those in the cities, will likely end up as climate refugees and need to relocate elsewhere. Much of the western US is also facing a growing desertification problem and dust and dust storms have been increasing. On the plus side, all the increased atmospheric dust has a cooling effect on the planet.
dumbomon 3y ago
Wait is there direct correlation between emissions and the expansion of the Sahara? My understanding was it started forming way before the European Industrial Revolution (any literature on topic would be awesome)

autoexec 3y ago

> you can't have people digging "half-moons" at a rate of 1 person/1 half-moon/1 day - that does not scale in any meaningful way. It'll get harder to maintain that pace as heat increases too. There'll be fewer and fewer hours that people can work outside. Rising temperatures will bring more heat-related illnesses and injuries. Considering the amount of ground they want to cover bringing in machinery to speed things up does sound like a good idea.

bluGill 3y ago
You don't need to dig them constantly. In a few years your village has enough, and now you just need to maintain them which takes less time and so can be done in the cooler parts of the day. And these green places will be cooler than the desert so even in the heat of the day the whole is cooler. Of course as the village population grows you send the "young men" out to the edge and have them dig a few more half-moons at a rate of one/day. However they are building next to previous green areas which are already lowering the local temperature, and if sometimes it takes 2 days to build one - who cares, there is no hurry.
- macspoofing 3y ago
  If you want to treat this as a nice community project, akin to a community garden - great! Just don't think that this makes ANY difference on the macro scale of solving the encroachment of the Sahara, in the same way that a set of community garden initiatives would not solve, in any way, the problem of feeding a huge urban population. For both those things, you need things done at a massive industrial scale. If you want to feed a largely urbanized population of 350 million, you need industrial-scale agriculture, backed by a massive transport and distribution network. If you want to hold back the Sahara by creating a green wall spanning thousands of kilometres, and hundreds of kilometres deep, that is likewise a massive industrial undertaking. >Of course as the village population grows you send the "young men" out to the edge and have them dig a few more half-moons at a rate of one/day. Uh huh - because that's what young men want to do, dig ditches for no wage or subsistence-level wage. What's going to happen is those who can, will simply leave.

girafffe_i 3y ago

Or utilize metric tonnes of cheap labor.

nickserv 3y ago

The idea here is to do things in a sustainable way for the local population. What you're describing is the exact opposite.