Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
Man-made climate change works both ways, according to the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology. Sometimes, in the case of you, me, and our SUV, it's bad. And sometimes, in the case of Genghis Khan's Mongol conquest, it's not so bad at all. From the London Daily Mail:
Genghis Khan has been branded the greenest invader in history - after his murderous conquests killed so many people that huge swathes of cultivated land returned to forest.
The Mongol leader, who established a vast empire between the 13th and 14th centuries, helped remove nearly 700million tons of carbon from the atmosphere, claims a new study.
The deaths of 40million people meant that large areas of cultivated land grew thick once again with trees, which absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
And, although his methods may be difficult for environmentalists to accept, ecologists believe it may be the first ever case of successful manmade global cooling.
Julia Pongratz, who headed the research, likes to use the word "events" to describe mass-scale human suffering:
‘We found that during the short events such as the Black Death and the Ming Dynasty collapse, the forest re-growth wasn't enough to overcome the emissions from decaying material in the soil,’ explained Pongratz.
‘But during the longer-lasting ones like the Mongol invasion... there was enough time for the forests to re-grow and absorb significant amounts of carbon.’
Though the Khan will remain known as Genghis the Destroyer and not Genghis the Green, Dr Pongratz hopes that her research will lead to future historians examining environmental impact as well as the more traditional aspects of study.
‘Based on the knowledge we have gained from the past, we are now in a position to make land-use decisions that will diminish our impact on climate and the carbon cycle,’ she said.
'We cannot ignore the knowledge we have gained.’
That's what I love about environmentalists. They can see the upside in everything. For them, the human misery glass is always half full.
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Aug '10
Re: Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
Maybe murdering millions of peasants and letting their land go fallow was an early form of carbon offsetting for the GHG damage done by their massive herds of ungulates farting their way across central Asia.
Aug '10
Re: Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
Just another version of the "fewer humans==a healthier planet" idea they've been floating for decades.
Or centuries, if we include Malthus and Ebeneezer Scrooge as early heroes for "decreasing the surplus population".
May '10
Re: Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
Iran is taking the high road, afterall. Save the polar bears! Build a bomb.
Resurrected from the Member Feed.
Edited on Jan 25, 2011 at 11:58amRe: Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
I can't wait for environmental revisionism to get to Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler and Mao. I can see the slogan now: Mass murder, it's good for the planet!
Re: Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
If Hitler had put scrubbers on the smokestacks at Auschwitz, they'd be writing about him in the same terms.
Nov '10
Re: Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
Or Swift. Perhaps this is just Dr. Pongratz's "modest proposal."
Jun '10
Re: Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
Perhaps Obama can start appointing khans instead of czars.
Aug '10
Re: Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
20 million "bad one" chortle/groans emanate from the pearly gates at once.
Jun '10
Re: Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
"The final solution" is one of the ugliest euphemisms ever created by the totalitarian mind. It requires a modern environmetalist to turn all such mass murders into mere "events."
Your kid's piano recital may be an "event." Mass slaughter never is.
Dec '10
Re: Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
Contrary to environmentalist usage, gold extracted from teeth and curios made from human skin do not fall under the categories of "reuse" and "recycle."
May '10
Re: Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
And then Charles the Fat had to ruin everything and start up the Medieval Warm Period. Piero the Gouty also bears much condemnation.
Dec '10
Re: Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
The book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus describes how the pre-Columbian Indians in both North and South America engaged in large-scale engineering of their ecosystems, using fire and massive earthworks. After first contact with Europeans, the Indian populations were decimated by contagious diseases and later explorers and settlers got the idea that tiny Indian populations lived in complete harmony with nature.
So one could argue that the Conquistadors and the New England explorers and colonists, having brought European diseases to the two densely-populated continents, not only removed the environmental scourge of humans, allowing the rainforest and the buffalo herds to grow unchecked, but also created some of the foundational myths of the environmental movement.
Dec '10
Re: Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
I'm laughing at the superior intellect.
- James T. Kirk
Jun '10
Re: Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
May '10
Re: Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
What misanthropic rot! This "study" smells of fraudulent propaganda to me. Can we just say that environmental extremists like these are the foremost drum-beaters for totalitarianism and that they are just - plain - evil?
May '10
Re: Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
Stuart Creque:
So one could argue that the Conquistadors and the New England explorers and colonists, having brought European diseases to the two densely-populated continents, not only removed the environmental scourge of humans, allowing the rainforest and the buffalo herds to grow unchecked, but also created some of the foundational myths of the environmental movement. · Jan 25 at 12:34pm
Good point. Try bringing it up at your next drumming circle and let me know how it goes over.
Aug '10
Re: Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
Unless this is a complete parody (and as with Genghis the Green, it's harder and harder to tell these days), they already are.
Re: Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
Pol Pot significantly reduced resource consumption, pneumonic carbon-dioxide emissions, and industrial pollutant output, not to mention an almost complete eradication of the harmful by-products of eyeglass manufacturing in Kampuchea. I guess the good professor regrets that it proved unsustainable. Boy, the West's Thanatos urge isn't even slightly sublimated any more, is it?
Dec '10
Re: Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
"And, although his methods may be difficult for environmentalists to accept,"
The Daily Mail writer seems to think environmentalists have qualms about megadeaths of humans. How charmingly naive!
Dec '10
Re: Genghis Khan, Environmental Activist
tabula rasa · Jan 25 at 12:38pm
Edited on Jan 25 at 12:40 pm
Love your screen name.
That's the name that's going on the '36 Ford I'm building right now.