In what sounds like a scheme concocted by an ambitious 5-year old, a group in Peru has begun painting all of the nearby mountain ranges white in the hopes of re-spawning glaciers.
There is actually a smattering of evidence that this will work to cool the surrounding areas, as lighter colors reflect more light than the mountain’s natural hue. Whether this project will make any actual appreciable difference in ice formations, however, remains to be seen.
While I offer the Peruvians kudos for their outside the box thinking, it’s hard to see this endeavor as anything other than the last desperate flailings of a civilization that jumped the enviro-shark a long, long time ago. We exceed at destroying living things in our surroundings. More often than not, our species makes up for this shortcoming by crafting ersatz yet glittering replicas of the life we snuffed out.
In taking a cue from the Peruvians, why don’t we dump a few million tons of Blue Dye Number One Food Coloring into the Gulf of Mexico, and paint BP’s dead sea turtles Crayola Screamin’ Green. Plush toy dolphins and manatees will suffice as a teaching tool to our grandchildren who will probably lack the funds to access Baton Rouge Sea World, home of the last seven living Gulf Coast sea creatures.
After all, wildlife is usually prohibitively expensive to maintain. It’s much more efficient to mass produce useless chotchkies.
Originally posted on Technorati.
