I know, you’re probably thinking this is a safe idea. “Let’s exile that lunatic to the vast desert of Western Australia. No matter how many bizarre plans they have, the collateral damage cannot possibly escape to the rest of the developed world.”
And of course, this seems perfectly reasonable. The diagonal of Western Australia is literally over two thousand kilometers in length.
It’s just over two point six million square kilometers in size. Even the construction of a Special Economic Zone kept wet by a nuclear-powered desalination plant would be dwarfed by four orders of magnitude by the shear scale of Western Australia.
But did you realize it’s possible to terraform the Outback with existing technology?
Who would fund such a thing? Well, multiple nations are looking to meet their climate commitments, and the newly-formed state of Technocratic Western Australia would be in a position to supply. A new city would need to be built to accommodate the infrastructure necessary to oversee this enormous project, along with a series of smaller and more temporary towns, allowing a great degree of flexibility in urban planning.
The scale of the project would ensure funding for the new regime for several decades, while power was consolidated and a new culture was forged across multiple immigrant groups brought in to provide the labor for the project. A tiered citizenship system, including education and service to advance up the hierarchy, with special status reserved for national heroes and more voice available in the National Delegation for loyalists, would place long-term political power in the hands of those committed to the new Western Australia.
As the trees spread across the continent, new development opportunities and industries would open up as the temperatures and local climates changed, paving the way for a nation of twenty million by the mid century.
The only thing preventing this future is that I am not in charge of Western Australia.
