A good share of the U.S. government is shut down over Trump’s faux emergency demand for taxpayer money to fund the wall that he promised his supporters, time and again, that Mexico would pay for.
Amid this manufactured crisis, which has easily over a million uncertain about their next paycheck (government employees and contractors, along with those who rely on those salaries (including, for example, food service providers who no longer have lunch customers)), some news came in to my desk top about walls to believe in, walls worthy of funding.
Just as The Great Wall can be seen from space, the PRC’s 21st version will likely be visible by the naked eye of space tourists in the coming years. China’s Great Green Wall “is planting a 4,500 kilometer area with 100 billion trees”. Planting trees to fight desertification is also a fast-acting tool to fight climate change.
A #wall to believe in. https://t.co/Myfx8cIObp
— A Siegel (@A_Siegel) December 17, 2018
Halfway around the world, Africa’s Great Green Wall targets an 8000km long “natural wonder of the world across the entire width of Africa” and “creates a barrier against climate change running across the Sahel region.” A decade in, it covers about 15% of that length with millions of planted trees and large swaths of improved land.
Rather than Trump’s steel picket monstrosity, a collaborative US-Mexican effort could combine large-scale renewable energy with agricultural projects to create a green swath along the border that would create jobs and prosperity for both nations.
Due to climate change and other impacts of human activity, human civilization (and natural ecosystems) is facing a Shrinking Planet: sea-level rise, desertification, and other impacts are literally reducing the land area available to support human civilization. Efforts like China’s and Africa’s Great Green Walls are paths to slow and even reverse that ‘shrinking’.
Amid the #TrumpShutdown, it is worth remembering and emphasizing that there are walls worth supporting, walls worth funding.