Genghis Khan, History's Greenest Conqueror 279
New research suggests that in addition to being one of history's cruelest conquerors, Genghis Khan may have been the greenest. It is estimated that the Mongol leader's invasions unintentionally scrubbed almost 700 million tons of carbon from the atmosphere. From the article: "Over the course of the century and a half run of the Mongol Empire, about 22 percent of the world's total land area had been conquered and an estimated 40 million people were slaughtered by the horse-driven, bow-wielding hordes. Depopulation over such a large swathe of land meant that countless numbers of cultivated fields eventually returned to forests. In other words, one effect of Genghis Khan's unrelenting invasion was widespread reforestation, and the re-growth of those forests meant that more carbon could be absorbed from the atmosphere." I guess everyone has their good points.
Re:Environmentalism = genocide? (Score:5, Informative)
They already do. Just not on the shows non-environmentalists watch, for the most part.
Re:Hitler was GREEN (Score:4, Informative)
FTFA: [mongabay.com]
"When the Mongol hordes invaded Asia, the Middle East, and Europe they left behind a massive body count, depopulating many regions. With less people, large swathes of cultivated fields eventually returned to forests, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. "
Article on how Hitler was History's Second Greenest Conqueror for killing 11+ million people in 3... 2... 1... [wikipedia.org]
Oh? Not awards for Hitler today? But 11 to 17 million less people means less fields needed and more forests, right? Surely with entire towns wiped out they returned to nature [google.com] and helped the environment, right?
No, because Hitler only picked out specific members of towns for execution, generally just slightly reducing the population of lots of places but not really impacting overall land use (also, he introduced us to the Autobahn, and just look at what that has resulted in). Genghis was much more of a progressive, killing everyone equally, resulting in large swathes of uninhabited land where resisting cities used to be. Stalin gets negative points because while he did kill lots of people, he also re-populated a whole bunch of the areas that Ghengis had gone to the trouble of de-populating in the first place.