So I’m a closet visionary. I predicted electronic talking dictionaries in the mid ’80’s when the Apple IIe/c was all the rage. What that proves I can’t say, I just thought it would lend some credibility into my initial public foray into uncharted waters. In this case the Indian and Pacific oceans.

With this post, I start writing about my ideas of where we could be headed. Mostly for fun yet I’m also quite serious.

Last night at dinner with friends I went public with an idea for a possible solution to a whole slew of global issues: food production, overpopulation, ethnic cleansing, species extinction and global warming. It’s crazy.

You ready?

Junglize Australia.

You heard me. Turn Australia into a huge green habitat for all of the world’s endangered life forms. Let’s create

jungles where right now is only sand and rock. That gigantic patch of arid land depicted on maps we’ll transform into the equivalent of a new Amazon.

The Australians certainly aren’t doing anything with it.

How would that be done, you ask?

Good question; I’m working on the specifics. You see I’m a big picture guy. I usually leave the details to other people.

But here’s how it could work: There happens to be a whole lot of water around Australia, you’ll notice this from any decent global map. And, as is very clear from observations of the polar caps, there’s a whole lot of water that’s becoming available every day.

So what we’ll do is build huge channels into the interior of Australia, with desalanization plants along the way. We’d build tributaries spreading across the continent essentially reversing the normal “water flows to the sea” tradition. (The possibility that this experiment may protect my Florida coastline investments has not escaped me.)

With the help of soil enhancement technology and Al Gore, we’ll then plant all of the necessary Amazon type trees in areas best suited to wildlife (Australian jungles), and in areas best suited to farming we’d then start that too.

Then we’d introduce endangered and threatened species (like they need more dangerous animals), as well as displaced peoples from every corner of the world.

And presto, we’d have a gigantic mess of new problems that we can barely imagine: lions sleeping with tigers, giraffes dating kangaroos etc.

But we will have done something constructive to address some of our problems. We’d have a great world project to have conversations about instead of our normal soul-killing pain and destruction conversations.

Sidebar:The Australians themselves may prefer the term “forest.” I like “jungle.” I mean the Australians are a nice people, but with the exception of Crocodile Dundee and Steve Irwin (the Crocodile Hunter), they’re often a fairly bland lot. (Indigenous people of course not included.) Junglizing Australia would add some flavor to these rather traditional British loyalists. With all of the new imigrants their accent would become “Caribbean like”. They’ll be inventing new dances and music, etc., etc.  Everybody wins.

Man, I’m excited. Anybody have Al Gore’s address? I’d love to hear what he thinks of my idea of junglizing Australia. My dinner companions last night didn’t have it.