I was astonished by the Great Green Wall Initiative in Africa. The plan is to create a continent-spanning wall of vegetation to prevent the Sahara Desert from expanding southward. It is nothing if not ambitious.

Apparently, the first phase is to create huge number of these tiny plots shaped in a special way to prevent rainwater from running off and planting drought-hardy native species in them, some of which can be harvested as a food source. Eventually, once the soil has recovered sufficiently, they can plant trees.

The initiative is high-tech in the sense of applying state-of-the-art knowledge on land management but low-tech in the sense that it will involve a whole lot of manual labour with simple implements.

But the scope of it is insane with 22 countries having signed on. It gives me hope that collective action in the face of climate change is possible anywhere in the world.

The idea that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon from less complex things working together. There’s no evidence of, for instance, a city or bee hive having “consciousness” so it’s philosophical, not scientific, but the idea appeals to me.

I think it appeals to me because it’s a bottom up approach to something we usually think of as top down. Emergence in general is very common in nature. Ants aren’t sophisticated but ant colonies can be surprisingly complex. Maybe it’s the same with our cells.