by Ned Dunkley

Created on: May 26, 2007   Last Updated: December 08, 2009

For many hundreds of years now mankind has reaped havoc on this beautiful blue green planet of ours. Europe used to be a woodland, this was destroyed to make way for agriculture and later for building homes and shipping and of course not forgetting wood for fuel, our ancestors had to keep warm as well.
This on its own was not too important, after all we were not producing vast amounts of carbon-based emissions back then and even if we were the Americas across the Atlantic Ocean were pretty well covered in virgin woodlands, so the emissions we produced could be consumed in the same way as they had done since the carboniferous period. Sadly these great forests are now all but depleted and we are producing more carbon emissions than ever.

The solution is simple, however it is also slow, and the end results may not be seen for up to five hundred years. Although within fifty years things would be established well enough to make a difference.

The dream
In Roman times the Sahara desert was green and it should be possible to make it so again, as previously stated it would be a very slow process and so it would need to be started sooner rather than later, it would happen in three main stages:

Step one
Water must be made available, with this plan it does not need to be fresh water. A swathe would need to be cut through the sahara desert, it would need to be wide and deep to prevent the sands of the desert from claiming it back. Also it would need to be made from great loops, the same as is seen when viewing the Amazon river from the air. These loops would give a greater surface area of land to volume of water. If this river is dug, it would need to be at least one hundred meters wide and twenty meters deep. Each loop would need to be in the region of five miles long and approximately one mile across. Obviously the further inland these swathes are cut the better and likewise the more of them that are made the better as well

Step two
The next step sounds rather unpleasant and controversial but would be a big help in the initial stages. The edges of the new river would need to be fertilized and the most abundant source of fertilizer available to man is mans' waste. This would include sewage and agricultural waste. Yes, this sounds terrible but surprisingly when sewage has been compressed it is remarkably similar to wet soil and not only that it does not smell too bad. There are areas in the world that use human waste as a fertilizer in preference to cattle manure already.

This

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