Fresh water, food and medicine will be the leverage in the next decades.
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The USA is doing fine on the medical technology front. You bump into a lot of people these days who have experienced one kind of medical miracle or anther. The docs/medical scientists say advances are only accelerating.
There is another revolution coming in water — but its probably a decade or two off. That revolution will be when the cost of desalination and transport is cheap enough so that water on any desert coast can be desalinated and pumped 1000 miles inland to grow crops competitively on world markets.
This is coming.
It will turn the world’s deserts green and double the size of the habitable earth.
I bet the greenies find a way to stop it.
Yep - all that's needed is a reliable source of power, and lots of it.
Well, solar power, windmills and unicorn farts won't do it.
If only mankind had developed a technology to power something like that.
Too bad we didn't find a way to harness the power of the atom and use nuclear power to run electric generating plants.
Or to power submarines, aircraft carriers and unmanned interplanetary space vehicles.
“It will turn the world’s deserts green and double the size of the habitable earth.”
You mentioned cost. The money is currently there and available. All the money that has been stolen for green projects could be diverted to an effort such as this.
Using global warming as the narrative, desalination facilities are built along the African coastline. Technology and infrastructure routes everything inland. This will create new economies, will green the continent and pretty much feed the world.
And best of all, it becomes a CO2 scrubber. And there is nothing anyone can do or say to contradict this.
Want to crowd fund it with me?