Ever heard of ‘Atlantropa‘?

Me neither, until just recently when I ran across this massive utopian civil enginnering proposal from German Architect Herman Sörgel. In the 1920’s he proposed damming off the Mediterranean ocean at the Straight of Gibraltar which would have the effect of creating a supercontinent that combined Africa and Europe which would be called ‘Atlantropa’. It was actually a serious proposal and studied by not just Germans but other countries including the US.

It’s features included:

- The creation of a great source of hydroelectric power.

- Vast new tracts of agricultural land where the Mediterranean Ocean had receded as well as the Sahara desert.

- Expand the influence of Europe and it’s growing populations.

- Redirected desalinated water from the Mediterranean would be used to irrigate much of Africa as well as a source for three new mammoth size lakes on the continent.

It ultimately fell out of favor due to the advent of nuclear power. There were also concerns that cutting off the warm waters of the Mediterranean from the Atlantic would upset the ocean conveyor belt in the North Atlantic thus creating a new ice age for Europe (wait, wouldn’t this solve global warming?!).

This is one of those wacky yet ingenious German ideas that came from the early 20th century. Some think that the environmental problems will eventually be solved and that this some day could become feasible.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 20th, 2007 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.