Bomb the Arctic, dam the Mediterranean and build a second moon: five outlandish plans to remodel our climate

Humans have long sought to geoengineer the Earth’s environment. Tim Flannery outlines a few of the wildest ideas from the 20th century

By Tim Flannery
Sun 5 Jul 2026 11.00 EDT, Last modified on Sun 5 Jul 2026 21.46 EDT

An increasing number of scientists think we have let the climate crisis fester for so long that our only hope to stave off ever-intensifying catastrophes is to use technological interventions. Cloud brightening, injecting sulphur into the atmosphere and the use of tiny mirrors in space – all of which might reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth’s surface – are among the concepts being promoted by entrepreneurs and governments alike. Geoengineering, they argue, is now inevitable.

Ever since the God of the Old Testament granted our species dominion over the Earth, ideas of remaking the world to better suit us have been a dominant thread in human thinking. We have for centuries toyed with grand ambitions to alter and re-form the climate and environment, many of which – in retrospect – seem doomed or absurd.

With new ideas brewing, I thought we should look back on some past initiatives to geoengineer our planet.

1. Atlantropa

In the 1930s the German engineer Herman Sörgel proposed that a dam be built across the strait of Gibraltar to lower the level of the Mediterranean Sea by two hundred metres. Vast acreages of new and fertile lebensraum would be created, to be worked by African labourers, so alleviating an age-old cause of Europe’s wars. Europe and Africa could also be supplied with limitless hydroelectricity.

The vision swept many along with it, with leading engineers even designing the great dam. A few quibbled about the impact that draining the Med might have on things like Venice’s canals (Sörgel promised “special measures” to deal with that).

Astonishingly, the Atlantropa plan survived the second world war and limped on until the 1960s.

2. Soviet plans to modify nature

Russians have always felt short changed when it comes to climate: as the US climatologist PE Lydolph, an expert on the geography of the Soviet Union, put it: “In general, the country lacks heat.”

The Soviet engineer PM Borisov had a plan to deal with that. All that was needed was to raise the temperature of the Earth by a couple of degrees and that could be achieved by building a dam across the Bering strait, so melting the Arctic ice cap.

It was as big job and other Soviet scientists countered that the same effect could be achieved by cutting a hole in the Thompson-Wyville Ridge. That would only involve excavating a mere 3,000 sq km of sea floor at depths of more than a kilometre.

This kind of thinking followed the proclamation of the “great Stalin plan for the transformation of nature” in 1948, which explored various massive engineering feats to render the Soviet environment more productive or hospitable. Decades after Stalin’s death in 1953, such ideas were still being seriously discussed, though economists protested at the expense.

3. Bombing to save the planet

The discovery of the power of the atom introduced a powerful age of techno-optimism. Harry Wexler, who led the scientific services division of the US Weather Bureau from the 1940s through to 1962, thought 10 carefully placed hydrogen bombs could do for the Arctic ice cap, heralding in an age of unprecedented warmth.

And the Russians believed that nuclear weapons were ideal for redirecting rivers. They actually detonated three devices in an effort to divert some northward-flowing rivers and were surprised to find that exploding three atomic bombs only cleared 700 metres of canal. This, and the apparently unanticipated radiation released, made it impossible to proceed.

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