Environmental Nightmares

[kelber at mindspring.com]

What is it about building a city in the desert that appeals to autocrats, from Ozymandias to Hughes to the "ruling Maktoum family"?  The environmental impact, in terms of water, not to mention air conditioning and trucking, is clearly devastating.  Does anyone other than low-tech indigenous people even have a right to live there?  To partially quote King Faisl in Lawrence of Arabia:  Why do you like the desert?  There's nothing here.

http://www.dubaitourism.ae/WorkingWithDubai/GatewaytoGlobalBusiness/tabid/318/language/en-US/Default.aspx

Out of the vast expanse of the Arabian desert, the emirate of Dubai has created a city that ranks as the commercial and tourist heart of the Middle East. A small trading and fishing community only four decades ago, Dubai is now a modern city where glass and steel office blocks line broad concrete roads and championship grass golf courses attract the finest players in the world. The ruling Maktoum family has invested the emirate's wealth from oil in infrastructure -  Dubai's sophisticated telecommunications and transport facilities are unmatched in the region, one of the many reasons it serves as the storage and distribution hub of the Middle East.

Thanksgiving in Las Vegas?  Sounds like a bad movie with Sinatra and Bing, maybe Vera-Ellen and Mamie van Doren, a cameo from Xavier Cugat, and of course all those show-girls Mickey Wolfmann loves so much.

Laura
-----Original Message-----
>From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>Sent: Nov 30, 2009 11:07 AM
>To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Environmental Nightmares
>
>Having just returned from Thanksgiving holiday in Las Vegas (not my
>idea - the two kids decided that their families and my wife & I should
>converge there this year), I was reminded of Sportello's venture
>there.  And I remembered the real estate thread of that trip, the "old
>strip" about to be redeveloped into a brand new casino (am I
>remembering correctly?).  Then I thought about how Mickey's
>residential development that is the scene of the initial murder is
>called an "environmental disaster" or something to that effect.  Why
>is it that Pynchon seems to ignore the environmental disaster that is
>Las Vegas?  And similarly, wouldn't Mickey's "putting up a whole city
>from scratch someday, out in the desert" for people to live in for
>free also have been an environmental disaster in terms of water
>supply?  And later, when Doc is discussing Mickey's development with
>that "old money" guy (I forget his name), it seems Mickey's
>development is an environmental disaster only because it brings the
>riff-raff out into the domain of the more aesthetically-minded
>old-money crowd.
>
>It just seems that real estate, development, and the environment have
>a large place in IV, but I just  don't see how the integrate into a
>coherent picture...
>
>David Morris