Dubai's World Islands cause environmental concern

The Economist featured an article on Dubai’s land reclamation projects off the coast to create a collection of islands that form an image of the world. As luxurious and wonderful I’m sure it would be to visit or live on an island of the world these projects have environmental impacts including ecosystems disturbance. While I think it’s important to protect the animals that live in area, it seems more important to realize what is at stake for the global community in building real estate developments like this. The energy resources to build and support this kind of a life style seem rather extreme. Fresh water resources are scarce and the Economist article notes that most of the water supply in Dubai comes from desalination which uses lots of energy!!! I can’t understand why building these little islands seem like a good idea when global climate change is such a concern worldwide. We should be helping to preserve the land and water we have now, not creating new land whose future may be short lived if we continue with our current behavior.

Dubai: Playground of the Rich and Home to Blackouts!?

Three undersea power lines to Dubai have been cut since Wednesday. The third ruptured while repair ships were in route to the first two disrupted cables. This has been a great blow to the international traders that base themselves in Dubai and is causing some noticeable tumult in the trading markets. Coupled with China's recent energy dilemma, I believe the defense thinktanks ought put some sincere effort into futurative strategizing.

This CNN report claims that:

"the [first] two cables damaged Wednesday collectively account for as much as three-quarters of the international communications between Europe and the Middle East, so their loss had a much bigger effect"

Ok. Now, I'm interested.

One person interviewed even mentioned that:

"a similar Internet problem could not happen in the United States. We have all the content here, he said. It's not going to be felt other than we won't get the BBC."

Alright, you've got me. I have to say it.

Since, I'm feeling Machiavellian today and my last blog concerned how we might opportunistically wrest economic dominance from China, I was wondering if anyone has every really considered that not only techy hubs like Dubai, but most of Asia relies on telecommunication lines from Europe to support a large part of their involvement and stock control in Western markets. What happens if someone turns off the cable on purpose?

I mention this only because this article says to me that, in spite of the rising dominance of China as an industrialized force, America still holds significant reigns. After all, the Westernization of the globe could really be called the Americanization of the globe. What would happen if China or Russia, or India suddenly had there new American cultural influence taken away from them?

All I know is that if we ever get into trouble with those nations a sure way to get their attention won't be economic sanctions, but our control lies in our ability to now threaten worldwide telecommunication sanctions.