The Mad Experiment.(Cover Story: Who Is the Greenest of Them All?; SPECIAL REPORT)(Dubai)

Byline: Christopher Dickey

Dubai's ecology may be a work of genius or insanity, but it's nothing if not artificial.

Dubai isn't ranked alone but as part of the U.A.E., which comes in at 112th.

Ah, Dubai. No metropolis has ever grown so fast from so little. The world's highest building now soars upward from land where camels wandered a few years ago. Three huge designer archipelagoes have erupted in the sea, including one that forms a map of the world. The question, environmentally speaking, is whether this mad, visionary experiment represents a threat to the world.

The Environmental Performance Index for the United Arab Emirates gives a fair idea of the impact that Dubai has had so far. The Emirates, a federation that also includes Abu Dhabi and five other states, ranks way down the EPI list at 112, an appalling performance for a country that falls among the world's 30 richest. By comparison, the worst European nation in the same income group, Belgium, comes in at 57, more than 50 places ahead of the Emirates, which scores as poorly as some of the world's 30 poorest nations. No rich nation except Kuwait lags its peers so badly. And if Dubai alone were surveyed, the numbers would be far worse.

The main problem is not environmental health for human beings. There's plenty of drinking water, thanks to the vast desalination plants, and sanitation is good. The real problem is what's being done to the natural ecosystems. The Emirates' score on that front is a miserable 38.2, while the "climate change" score from all the oil and gas burning is an abysmal 26.6.

In Dubai, entertainment trumps the environment everywhere you turn, imitating it and reconstituting it. On the inland edge of Dubai a stupendous theme park and resort complex now under construction advertises itself as 186 million square meters "encompassing the entire spectrum of human experience." A promotional video calls it "a fantasy land set right in the heart of the desert." Yet there's going to be water everywhere: seawater made potable by enormous oil- and gas-burning plants that already have an installed capacity of 1.26 billion liters a day.