Earth Equity News

Carl Hodges: How Rising Sea Water Can Solve the Food Crisis. By Marla Dickerson, LATimes, July 13, 2008. "Carl Hodges, [is] a Tucson-based atmospheric physicist who has spent most of his 71 years figuring out how humans can feed themselves in places where good soil and fresh water are in short supply. [He is] the founding director of the University of Arizona's highly regarded Environmental Research Lab, Hodges [and now heads the nonprofit Seawater Foundation]... The Earth's ice sheets are melting fast. Scientists predict that rising seas could swallow some low-lying areas, displacing millions of people. Hodges sees opportunity. Why not divert the flow inland to create wealth and jobs instead of catastrophe? He wants to channel the ocean into man-made 'rivers' to nourish commercial aquaculture operations, mangrove forests and crops that produce food and fuel. This greening of desert coastlines, he said, could add millions of acres of productive farmland and sequester vast quantities of carbon dioxide, the primary culprit in global warming. Hodges contends that it could also neutralize sea-level rise, in part by using exhausted freshwater aquifers as gigantic natural storage tanks for ocean water. Analyzing recent projections of ice melt occurring in the Antarctic and Greenland, Hodges calculates that diverting the equivalent of three Mississippi Rivers inland would do the trick. He figures that would require 50 good-sized seawater farms that could be built within a decade if the world gets cracking. 'The only way we can stop [sea-level rise] is if people believe we can,' said Hodges, whose outsize intellect is exceeded only by his self-assurance. 'This is the big idea' that humanity has been waiting for, he believes... [Salicornia is] a so-called halophyte, or salt-loving plant, the briny succulent thrives in hellish heat and pitiful soil on little more than a regular dousing of ocean water. Several countries are experimenting with salicornia and other saltwater-tolerant species as sources of food. Known in some restaurants as sea asparagus, salicornia can be eaten fresh or steamed, squeezed into cooking oil or ground into high-protein meal."