Apparently, Genghis Khan was good for the environment. So say researchers at the Stanford University Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology.
Now, of course, this is just the sort of ridiculous headline one expects on a "scientific" press release which will get it mainstream media exposure – and I'll leave that whole line of discussion to experts like Ben Goldacre.
No one who wouldn't already have done so will actually read the study, and the majority of us who come across it at work or at home will shake our heads at the ridiculous things people get paid to write about.
Anyway, the argument goes that by laying waste to Asia, Genghis Khan cut carbon emissions by the same amount as current global CO2 output from burning petrol each year. This was achieved by depopulation resulting in the regrowth of cleared forest over previously cultivated land.
Well, I for one am relieved that "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" was fictional, because if Genghis Khan had been lured by means of a Twinkie into travelling through time to 1980s San Dimas, we might all be living in a barren dystopian wasteland by now.
I don't know if the researchers took into consideration the amount of carbon released by the inevitable degree of village burning which Genghis Khan's towering achievement entailed. I'm also fairly certain that rotting corpses – of which there must have been a fair few, unless the Mongols were keen home-composters – release greenhouse gases.
What does the Carnegie Institution amount to? Well, presumably the argument goes that slaughtering 40 million people would be good for the environment – which would be a difficult political programme for any party to sell, particularly if burning villages along the way was out of the question. Some researchers also suggest that Genghis himself may have 16 million direct male descendents living today as a result of his antics, which is quite a major offset. Naughty naughty!
It seems to me that to attribute carbon reduction to reforestation that occurred as a side effect of depopulation brought about by mass murder is fairly tenuous. I think everyone can agree that anthropogenic global warming would come to an end if humanity was wiped from the face of the earth. But so what? That insight doesn't give you anything you can act on.
The subtext of this study casts Genghis Khan in Attila the Hun's "Scourge of God" role.
Attila was widely viewed as the antichrist - an unstoppable nemesis coming to destroy mankind for straying from the righteous path. Ironically, much like some people view climate change today.
People: science is one thing; faith in millenarian eschatology is quite another. Let's keep them separate. Don't waste time repenting – just get on with dealing with it.
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