Page 222 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

book raised a number of environmental, cultural, and political concerns,
41
including the possibility of warfare triggered by macro-engineering projects.
Verne’s idea was revived in whole cloth in 1911 by a French scientist named
Etchegoyen, who again proposed to convert large portions of the Sahara into
an inland sea by digging a 50-mile canal on the north coast of Africa. He
touted the ease of construction and the massive benefits: more fertile soil
and cropland, a cooler local climate, and a great new colony for France along
the “Sea of Sahara.” Critics warned that the massive redistribution of water,
up to half the volume of the Mediterranean Sea, might tip the Earth’s axis,
adversely affect regional precipitation patterns, or even trigger an ice age in
northern Europe. 42
In the 1930s, the German architect Herman Sörgel’s “Atlantropa Project”
promoted the idea of lowering the level of the Mediterranean Sea and develop-
ing more than 3 million acres of new territory (an area as large as France) for
European settlement. According to Sörgel, the construction of gigantic dams at
Gibraltar and the Dardanelles to drain much of the Mediterranean and generate
massive amounts of power “would assure Europe a utopian future of expanded
territory; abundant, clean, and cheap energy; and the revival of its global eco-
nomic and political might.” Sörgel tried to sell his ideas first to the Nazis and
then, during the cold war, to Western governments as a hedge against Soviet
expansionism in Africa.
But lowering the Mediterranean Sea was only part of Sörgel’s vision. He also
wanted to irrigate much of Africa by building a massive system of dams and
artificial lakes. Damming the Congo River, Africa’s mightiest and the second-
most-voluminous river in the world, near its outlet at Brazzaville, Congo, would
create a huge new lake that Sörgel dubbed the “Congo Sea,” basically covering
the entire surface area of that nation. A chain of events, including the drowning
of natives, wildlife, and ecosystems, would then occur. By his calculations, the
Ubangi River would reverse its course, flowing northwest into the Chari River
and finally into the greatly enlarged “Chad Sea.” These two new seas would cover
about 10 percent of the continent, and the northern outlet could be dubbed the
“Second Nile,” flowing north across the Sahara to create an irrigated settlement
corridor in Algeria similar to that in Egypt. Sörgel’s plan also included a giant
hydroelectric plant at Stanley Falls, with sufficient surplus electric power to illu-
minate and industrialize much of the continent (figure 7.2). 43
American and Soviet hydrological engineers, too, dreamed of such macro-
scale projects. In the 1950s and 1960s, the North American Water and Power
Alliance proposed to channel 100 million acre-feet of water per year from Alaska
and Canada for use in the southwestern United States and Mexico. Soviet

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