Atlantropa

I was very excited about this project when I was a teenager - another was a "simple" dam just at Marmara/Black sea / Istanbul. However, as any adult can see the financial impact vastly supersedes the potential benefits. Besides the obvious impact to the local seaside communities in Southern Europe, you would have to deal with unstable regimes in northern Africa and Turkey and the geopolitical side of things. Wars have been fought for much less important things than land…

When I read the first paragraph, I was immediately reminded of my feelings when watching the Star Trek:TNG episode, made in the late 80's where Picard considered quitting Star Fleet to head the Atlantis Project. When I watched that episode recently, I found the idea that future people would allow large alterations to the earth to be discordant. It is interesting that, according to the article, Roddenberry also incorporated the idea of a dam across the Strait of Gibraltar into…

I can see a new grand purpose to this plan. To protect the mediterranean coast from the RAISING sea caused by global warming. Rather than each town and country trying to protect itself. As we are finding out, power is getting cheaper and cheaper all the time, and North Africa is a great source of sun power. So the need to generate power is reduced. This would eliminate many of the objections to the plan.

The German “pacifist” projects’ ideals which of course excludes Africans: The utopian goal was to solve all the major problems of European civilisation by the creation of a new continent, "Atlantropa", consisting of Europe and Africa, to be inhabited by Europeans. Sörgel was convinced that to remain competitive with the Americas and an emerging Oriental "Pan-Asia", Europe must become self-sufficient, which meant possessing territories in all climate zones. Asia would forever remain a mystery to Europeans, and the…