Dubai's Palm Islands: Tourism, Oil, and Economic Vision

Introduction: Modern Wonders and Economic Purpose

There certainly seems to be a pattern within human civilization that encourages each society to attempt to make its mark upon the world. Through the ages, such marks have come in many forms: the Great Pyramids of Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Eiffel Tower of Paris have all represented something more significant and lasting than the mere practical purposes each monument served. Throughout history, the criteria for judging a human creation as a wonder has doubtlessly involved the fusion of artistic form, technological or engineering expertise, and sheer enormity. Accordingly, it should not be surprising that modern societies have made analogous testaments to their power, greatness, and audacity.

The fact is that in the ancient world as well as in the modern world, people continue to be attracted to dramatic demonstrations of human ingenuity. The result, particularly in the emerging global economy, is that modern wonders of the world possess the capacity to generate substantial profit for those bold enough to undertake them. The Palm Islands in Dubai fit this mold for the third millennium: they are grandiose, beautiful, and enormous. Additionally, they promise to maintain Dubai's emerging economy well after the world's oil supply is exhausted.

It is noteworthy that what makes the Palm Islands in Dubai exceedingly attractive to tourists and foreign investors is that building and maintaining them is a gamble in the extreme. It is difficult to imagine a democratic nation making such a decisive and risky economic move, or to imagine another governmental organization looking so far into the future. One major drawback of a democratic nation under a capitalistic economy is that short-term gains emerge as the primary impetus for change. Accordingly, western nations have not formulated realistic plans for major long-term dilemmas: no western nation has put forward an effective answer for supplying the world's power needs after fossil fuels begin to run out, nor an effective means to minimize human influence on the global climate. This can be seen as a consequence of the short-term demands upon capitalistic ventures, as well as those upon individual political leaders who are forced to worry about upcoming elections more than emerging issues half a century away. The advantage of having a Crown Prince, in this respect, is that such a leader is compelled to look toward maintaining their regime on the scale of lifetimes. Thus, the fantastic scale upon which the Palm Islands and the World Islands in Dubai have been organized must be perceived as a dramatic reaction to expansive trends in the global economy measured in upcoming decades.

Oil Depletion and the Strategic Rationale for the Palm Islands

The driving force that has ultimately resulted in the Palm Islands is the upcoming world energy problem. It has been estimated that the oil reserves within Dubai are likely to run out by 2016, should the world continue to consume oil at the rate reached by 1990. An additional complication is that the world continues to consume fossil fuels at an exponential rate; as developing nations act to catch up with western powers, they simultaneously increase global dependence upon oil. Western usage of electricity has also continued to rise as internet technologies have driven steady increases in both industrial and domestic energy consumption. The ultimate result is that as oil begins to run out, global consumption is increasing at such a rate that even if immediate measures were taken to find alternate energy sources, the ongoing wave of consumption could not be halted.

Such doomsday proclamations are not congruous with the role western politicians desire to fill; no one wants to be the leader who declares that a great cataclysm is about to befall the world. So, while most democratic nations debate the scientific validity of global warming and projections regarding oil reserves, more autocratic nations are able to act with greater decisiveness.

Under the guidance of Crown Prince Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai's coastline is undergoing a dramatic transformation in an attempt to compensate for the lost income that will befall the nation around 2016. The Crown Prince is seeking an alternative way to generate this income; he wants Dubai to become the tourist capital of the world. To accomplish this, he needs two things: a longer coastline and a unique wonder to draw people interested in the rare accomplishments of mankind. The Palm Islands satisfy both of these demands — increasing the length of the famous Dubai beaches by more than a factor of ten while simultaneously constituting an aesthetic engineering feat. Ultimately, it is these practical demands for a thriving economy that have spurred the transformation of Dubai's coastline and promise to supply one of the wonders of the modern world.

Democratic Limitations and the Advantage of Decisive Leadership

The current energy problem is both economic and environmental. Alternatives to oil must be found and incorporated into existing systems of distribution to reduce dependence on a foreign and finite resource and to cease the emission of harmful chemicals into the environment. A number of energy sources offered by western politicians include cold fusion, fuel cells, and biomass. Yet these possibilities can be presently set aside because none of them have yet been perfected or demonstrated to be cleaner, cheaper, safer, or more sustainable than currently used methods. Cold fusion is still languishing in theoretical form; fuel cells require the costly process of generating pure hydrogen; and biomass resources have yet to significantly eliminate harmful byproducts. The most reasonable forms of energy to be utilized in the near future remain natural gas, coal, and nuclear power, with limited room for wind, geothermal, solar, and hydroelectric sources.

Fundamental changes to the social order of the world are underway, and the approach of the Crown Prince of Dubai seems to reflect the differing capacities of political organizations to address these changes. This is not to say, of course, that prominent citizens of the United States and European nations have not urged democratic countries to look toward the future in similar ways. Richard Heinberg's book The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, for example, presents a comprehensive and insightful examination of the fundamental way society has been structured for the past one hundred and fifty years, and how our way of life now rests on the brink of monumental change.

Simply put, the book discusses the role of oil in the world. Unlike many of its predecessors, however, Heinberg ensures that The Party's Over takes a broader point of view regarding global warming and avoids the drawbacks of finger-pointing. His argument is not centrally that our consumption of fossil fuels is leading to irreversible climate shifts — although he acknowledges that it is — nor is it that political conservatism and liberal economics have doomed the future of mankind. Instead, Heinberg takes a more historical perspective: he illustrates the age of industrialization as having stemmed from certain abundant energy sources, and argues that we have now very nearly reached the end of this particular social order. In other words, the progression of the industrial age has inevitably brought us to this point: the global climate will change, the social order will change, and there will be war. This is a bold line of reasoning, and it somehow seems more at home in nations with a decisive leader willing to drastically alter an economic base. Whereas in the United States it would be virtually impossible to find a leader willing to embrace such a point of view regarding world history, Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum and his four sons have already undertaken the construction of the city of tomorrow today.

This answers one of the pressing questions when discussing the Palm Islands of Dubai: namely, why Dubai? There are beautiful coastlines across the United States and other democratic nations that could potentially serve as the site for such a wonder of the modern world. However, undertaking this project would seem to be simply too risky to be agreed upon democratically. The cost thus far has been estimated at $1.8 billion — far too much to have invested if it is presumed that oil resources are boundless, which appears to be the position of most western governments. A $10 billion project to build a new city called Dubai Marina is already well underway, intended to house 100,000 people around a large water basin within a decade. The third addition to the Dubai coastline is intended to be a reconstruction of the world's continents: "The World" is a $14 billion endeavor consisting of 300 individual islands arranged to mimic the shape of the globe's landmasses.

Conclusion: Tourism as a Long-Term Economic Alternative

Ultimately, it is difficult to argue that the driving force behind the creation of the Palm Islands in Dubai is some abstract notion of human progress. After all, it would not be an altogether unbelievable engineering feat had the Crown Prince not demanded that the islands be created wholly from natural materials. By using concrete foundations the islands could have been built and sustained at far lower costs and would have maintained much of their appeal; however, the natural beauty of the Dubai beaches would have been diminished. Fundamentally, the difficulty of the project was demanded by the type of beaches that tourists prefer. Thus, the notion behind the Palm Islands was not mere aesthetic appeal or a demonstration of engineering prowess, but profit. The islands were built from rock and sand alone because rock and sand are the requirements for a good beach.