While the novel takes place in an un-named country in the far distant future, it’s a book for climate activists and general readers in Israel and other parts of the Middle East to ponder, because the dystopian future MacDonald writes about could very well happen anywhere on Earth.

The book is a wake-up call about global warming, and Winterton’s review is the first time the book was
reviewed in a print newspaper anywhere in the world. Go take a look at the review and then if you’re still interested, get your hands on the book. On one level, it’s a fun read, and on another level, it’s what the future may very well look like.

Excerpt from the book review: “In Hamish MacDonald’s ‘Finitude,’ humankind teeters on the brink of extinction after failing to clean up its environmental act and save the planet….This is a coherent, lively and fast-moving attempt to put a widely feared future into imaginative, fictional form.”

::Taipei Times

Two recent international news stories about climate change (“How much more proof is needed for people to act?” and “Ignoring the future — the psychology of denial,) emphasized the importance of facing major issues that will have an impact on the future of the human species.

Climate change is indeed an issue that is on everyone’s mind, and while most people in Israel and other parts of the Middle East seem to be far removed from the experts who recently made their way to Copenhagen to try — in vain, as it turns out — to hammer out blueprints to prevent global warming from having a Doomsday impact on humankind, the Middle East will also be on the front lines of these issues.

Despite most observers’ belief that solutions lie in mitigation, there are a growing number of climatologists and scientists who believe that the A-word — adaptation — must be confronted head-on, too. The fact is — despite the head-in-the-sand protestations of denialists like Marc Morano and Sarah Palin in the USA — that we cannot stop climate change or global warming.

The Earth’s atmosphere has already passed the tipping point, and in the next 500 years, temperatures and sea levels will rise considerably and millions, even billions, of people from the tropical and temperate zones will be forced to migrate in search of food, fuel and shelter. This includes the people of all nations in the
Middle East.

By the year 2500, the Middle East region will be largely uninhabited, except for a few stragglers eking out subsistence lives in mountainous areas. The rest of the Middle East population will have migrated north
to Russia’s northern coast or northern parts of Alaska and Canada to find safe harbor from the devastating impact of global warming.

They will have left the region for faraway northern climes to find shelter in UN-funded climate refuges in places such as Russia, Canada and Alaska. Israeli, Palestinian, Egyptian and Iranian climate refugees will join millions of others from India, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan and the Philippines. It won’t be a pretty picture.

When this blogger asked acclaimed British scientist James Lovelock if such a scenario for the Middle East was likely, he said in an e-mail: “It may very well happen, yes.” (Lovelock’s book “Gaia” was featured here on Green Prophet – click this link to read it).

We humans cannot engineer our way out of global warming, although scientists who believe in geo-engineering have offered theories on how to do it (a tower that sucks up greenhouse gases?). There are no easy fixes. Humankind has pumped too many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the result of the industrial revolution that gave us trains, planes, automobiles and much more, enabling us to live comfortable and trendy lives — and now there is so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that the Earth cannot recover.

The people of the Middle East region, like the rest of the world, is doomed to a bleak future full of billions of climate refugees seeking shelter in the far north, and in places like New Zealand, Tasmania and Antarctica in the far south.

Meetings in Copenhagen and Rio de Janeiro and at the UN in Manhattan will not stop global warming.

What we need to focus on now is preparing future generations for what our world will become in the next 500 years and how best to survive it.

For the next 100 years or so, life will go on as normal in Israel and its neighboring countries. There is nothing to worry about now. For the next 100 years posh department stores will hawk their trendy items, computer firms will launch their latest gadgets and airline companies will continue to offer passengers quick passage here and there, to the Maldives and to Manhattan, for business and for pleasure.

But in the next 500 years, according to Lovelock and other scientists who are not afraid to think outside the box and push the envelope, things are going to get bad. Unspeakably bad.

Those of us who are alive today won’t suffer, and the next few generations will be fine, too. The big trouble will probably start around 2200 and last for some 300 years or so.

By 2500, all the nations of the Middle East will be history, as will the nations of Africa, Asia, North America and Europe.

We are entering uncharted waters, and as the waters rise and the temperatures go up, future generations will have some important choices to make: where to live, how to live, how to grow food, how to power their climate refugee settlements, how to plan and how to pray.

Danny Bloom is a climate activist and writer based in Taiwan.

“The increase of population – a strong argument for urban living – has required 1.2 acres of farmland per average person (to sustain dietary requirements),” she says.

“In addition, the equivalent to 1 acre is lost per person increase in population. This consumption of land will result in the devastation of arable land by 2050.

What is the resolution? Can farm and city intersect? Can there be efficiency in this intersection?”

“The categorization of the program is not efficient unless each category can co-exist symbiotically. Two programs of function have fluctuated severely in opposing trends: agriculture and technology. By the 2050, the ratio of arable land to population for the U.S. alone will be a third of what they were at the beginning of the century. This will have a severe impact on the landscape and diplomacy of programs.”

So she proposes a field project as a thought experiment, noting: “The city as a field project explores the compacting capabilities of a city. The very nature of an urban environment pushes the limits of density and necessity. Through its evolution, the city will be required to understand the limits of space, and re-determine its value and function.

“Through advanced developments in technology, plants will grow at a high efficiency rate, with little demand on resources. Through the use of hydroponic gardening, crops can grow up to 10 times the volume per space at the beginning of the 21st century. This method needs to be exploited as a means to limit space as our main resource.”

Through the use of stacked hydroponic gardening, algae will opportunistically grow underneath each layer from build-up of water, carbon dioxide, minerals and light. The algae will then be harvested to produce much needed biofuel for the city. The amount of algae needed to equal the amount of diesel consumed in the United States is equal to 0.5% of the farm land used in the country.

By 2050, algae will be required to provide most, if not all, of all fuel consumed, and will be economically resilient.”

Algae-for-fuel projects of Seambiotic and of Isaac Berzin’s project in Arizona (read this background story here on MSNBC) are becoming a viable source of fuel. Algae in city farms? Why not?

For details contact Daniels at her website.

In a recent oped column in the New York Times, Despommier looked into his crystal ball and came up with these insights as to why.

“If climate change and population growth progress at their current pace, in roughly 50 years farming as we know it will no longer exist. This means that the majority of people could soon be without enough food or water. But there is a solution that is surprisingly within reach: Move most farming into cities, and grow crops in tall, specially-constructed buildings. It’s called vertical farming.”

More comments from his insightful article:

“….apply the vertical farm concept to countries that are water-challenged — the Middle East readily comes to mind — and suddenly things look less hopeless. For this reason the world’s very first vertical farm may be established there, although the idea has garnered considerable interest from architects and governments all over the world.”

“Vertical farms are now feasible, in large part because of a robust global greenhouse initiative that has enjoyed considerable commercial success over the last 10 years. [Editor’s note: Dr. Despommier has started a business to build vertical farms. ”

“Vertical farms would also make cities more pleasant places to live. The structures themselves would be things of beauty and grace. In order to allow plants to capture passive sunlight, walls and ceilings would be completely transparent. So from a distance, it would look as if there were gardens suspended in space.”

“When people ask me why the world still does not have a single vertical farm, I just raise my eyebrows and shrug my shoulders. Perhaps people just need to see proof that farms can grow several stories high.As
soon as the first city takes that leap of faith, the world’s first vertical farm could be less than a year away from coming to the aid of a hungry, thirsty world. Not a moment too soon.”

Vertical farms in Israel and other countries in the Middle East? At the moment, it sounds like science fiction, but what the future holds, no one knows for sure.

Dr Despommier might just be on to something very, very…..vertical!

::NY Times

More on vertical farms:
Vertical Farm In Dubai Uses Seawater To Sustain Crops
Will Farmers of the Future Work in Skyscrapers?

For Reynard Loki and Jennifer Daniels, the future might lie, for some people in places such as Israel or Australia, in what they are calling Underground Desert Living Units, UDLU for short.

Loki began working on the idea in March 2008, and he later found Daniels to do the illustrations.

When asked how he was inspired to create UDLU, Loki said a news article titled “Exotic climate study sees refugees in Antarctica” got him thinking about where such refugees might live. Another news article titled “Global Warming Threatens Australia’s Iconic Kangaroos” spoke of climate models showing up to a six-degree rise in Australia’s temperature by the year 2070.

The article predicted that large swaths of Australia will become dry and parched.

And then a radio interview with British scientist James Lovelock about New Zealand serving in the future as a “lifeboat” for climate refugees in the southern hemisphere convinced Loki that the idea of UDLU might be useful to think about and envision.

“You’ve seen it happening in Australia already: Desert is spreading and things just won’t grow,” Lovelock told a New Zealand radio station reporter last year. “The island nations like New Zealand will be spared that kind of damage.”

Loki remembers how the idea for UDLU came to him: “Thinking about the possible eventual loss of fertile land, the growth of desert climates and creation of global warming refugees recalled my own desire to
build a house in the desert when I first visited California’s Mojave Desert several years ago. The idea back then was to build a biomorphic living space based on cell structure as a way to emulate nature. All of the rooms would be circular — there would be no corners.”

The concept of the Underground Desert Living Unit (UDLU) takes certain design elements moves them underground, envisioning a localized solution for “global warming refugees,” allowing them to stay in their original region, according to Loki, who lives in New York City.

UDLUs could be easily interconnected, allowing flexibility and community growth, leaving a wind energy generator, a solar energy generator, a solar-powered greenhouse and an air purifier system above ground, he says.

The idea of UDLU is to give an option to the millions of possible ”global warming refugees,” he adds, noting: “So we don’t have to go to New Zealand or to polar regions to live in so-called polar cities, also under development as a futuristic idea. We can move underground, underneath our newly-born desert landscapes.

Questions still linger, Loki admits.

He asks: “How will UDLUs be built? What will they be made of? How will energy be generated? How will food be grown in these newly-formed arid regions? How will water will be accessed? What will living underground do to us physically or psychologically?”

Loki has set up the Underground Desert Living Research Institute (UDLRI) to promote the research and development of an inexpensive, flexible, easily constructed, sustainable, eco-friendly Underground Desert Living Unit (UDLU) and hopes to collect, share and analyze information about global warming, green architecture and sustainable technologies, he says.

More on climate refugees:
Climate Change Kills Syrian Villages

This guest post is by Dan Bloom, a climate activist working in Taiwan. He graduated from Tufts College in 1971 in Boston. He is an advocate of polar cities, building retreats for humankind for when the effects of global warming will make regions we live in today inhospitable.