RE-GREENING THE DESERT 

As people around the world become emotionally upset over the destruction of the Amazonian rain forest, some are taking a more positive view and seeing new approaches to the opportunity that change offers. One such attempt at this new thinking is being studied by Japan's Kabushikikaisha Akita Inc. Aware that much of the rain forest is being cleared for ranches in order to produce hamburgers for the North American fast food market, Akita have produced a mushroom that tastes like a hamburger. It is far healthier (all the vitamins and minerals, very low-fat and low-cholesterol) and can be cooked on a barbecue! Stiff competition on the marketshelf may do more than emotional protests.

Others on that same Pacific island see other opportunities. Such as Shimizu Corporation of Tokyo. They looked at planet earth and saw that one-third of the land mass has been taken over by desertification. They want to regreen the deserts - an area ten times larger than the Brazilian rain forest.

Consider their plan. They wish to study the desert, understand the desert, and then put more life into the desert. They have taken the first two steps. Now to create life where little existed before. They already have some basic facts: where there are deserts there are mountains. In many cases mountains are responsible for deserts. That and the fact that offshore water temperatures usually differ radically from the nearby on-shore temperatures. Mountains could provide higher level storage areas ocean water pumped in from the sea enabling them to provide a steady, controlled, gravitational flow.

The following is a discription of a basic plan: to create interconnected salt water lakes, containing man-made residential islands, on inland deserts. The plan would lower surrounding temperatures (through evaporation), provide additional local humidity, supply a canal transportation system with a "riverflow" component and provide sufficient salt water to operate large-scale desalinization plants to supply fresh water for domestic, commercial, industrial and agricultural use.

Think of the implications of converting thousands of square miles of the most desolate areas on the planet into viable, pleasant residential, commercial and clean industrial areas. Especially in such areas as Africa, now home to starving millions. Africans won't need aid when their own land once more becomes productive. Consider also the global benefit, when a lot more of the planet's citizens become productive instead of draining wealth from countries that have already reached higher economic levels More information: Masami Shiraishi, Mgr., Desert & Human Geoscience Dept., Technology Div., Shimuizu Corporation, Shibaura Shimizu Bldg., No. 15-33 Shibaura 4-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108, Japan.

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