Unreal reality

I am looking out the window as we approach Abu Dhabi airport. I've done this so many times you'd think I should be reading my newspaper instead, but the views never cease to amaze me. In fact, before I talk about the views coming into Abu Dhabi, let me say a quick word about the views coming into Muscat: Stunning.

Oman from the air

Actually, perhaps I should say more than just one word. If I were a geologist, which I am not - although sometimes I get mistaken for one - I would definitely get really excited by the approach into Muscat. Even as a non-geologist I cannot help but be seriously impressed by the stunning mountain formations that encircle Muscat and in fact are present all along the north-eastern part of Oman. I could go on about this being an incredible example of fold-thrust belts and tectonic movement. Suffice to say they are some pretty impressive rocks!

But back to Abu Dhabi, where we are still on the final approach into Abu Dhabi International airport. It's desert and it's flat. By rights there should be nothing here but sand as far as the eye can see. And there's certainly sand - lots of it - but scattered amongst the lines of dunes are geometrical shapes on a massive scale. Totally out of place and totally artificial, but impressive nonetheless. Evidence of man's efforts to outsmart nature is everywhere. Patches of green are juxtaposed against the dull beige sand. Long lines of motorways, dead straight, head off into the distance. Those motorways have strips of green along them - hundreds of kilometres of it. There are neat parallel rows of trees - probably hundreds (thousands?) of hectares of them. As we get a little closer to Abu Dhabi the "suburbs" come into view. I cannot help but be impressed by the sheer scale of what man has done here, and I am equally impressed by the perfectly symmetrical layouts of the housing estates. I am appalled and impressed in equal measure. Those housing estates have been designed to be geometrically impressive from above, with circles and wavy lines in amongst the straight lines of the through roads; the engineer in me is seriously impressed by how they manage to get all those lines so straight and get those shapes so symmetrical on such a scale. Each intersection is a perfect circle roundabout. Mosques are spaced at regular intervals.

Everything is artificial however. Not only that, everything green was to be artificially watered, and that water has to be artificially created. The massive desalination plants in Abu Dhabi are probably the largest in the world (The UAE could have a similar slogan to Texas: "everything is bigger in the UAE"). To be fair, the irrigation uses mostly wastewater - so the desalinated seawater is at least used twice, Virtually all of the power to run the desalination plants - and power all the lights along those hundreds of kilometres of road and to run all the millions of air conditioners necessary to make it actually possible to live in those houses - comes from fossil fuels. The carbon footprint of this part of the world must be stunning. It must be said, however, that there is a recognition of this and there are efforts being made to introduce renewable energy sources.

Yas Island

Further on the approach, we fly over Yas Island, which sort of typifies the whole "if we want it, we'll have it made" approach. The shallow waters - a gorgeous pale blue colour - have clear navigation channels dredged in them to lead to the rather out of place marina (a marina in the desert?) There's one of the many gorgeous - green - golf courses and of course the now-iconic Ferrari World. The blue F1 track stands out as we pass low over it on final approach.


Looking out over all this man-made geometrical perfection, I can't help wondering what will happen when the oil runs out and the lights go out. Not having any drinking water is going to make life pretty uncomfortable to say the least and I imagine not much of that green stuff will stay green for very long without constant irrigation. At least there's plenty of sunshine, so if solar power systems have indeed been implemented by then there may be some chance of this place not simply returning to its natural state as the desert blows back in over the deserted (and as soon as I typed that, I realise what a great example of an unintended play on words that is) streets and housing estates.

Browsing the web on this subject I came across a terrific example of the sort of thing I'm talking about. Not Abu Dhabi, but its more brash neighbour, Dubai. These two images are taken only 25 years apart! I wonder what it will look like in another 25 or 50 years? The images show the Emirates Golf Club. Notice also in the background (top right) of the 2013 image the artificial island (there are rather a lot of these in this area).

Emirates Golf Club - 1988

Emirates Golf Club - 2013