The SeaNet Vision
Stop Rising Seas & Turn Melting Ice Into Blue Gold
Russ Walsh
For the past decade, I’ve focused on climate and sustainability. During COVID, while working at General Electric, I began researching sea level rise and discovered something troubling: the world’s brightest minds had no real solution beyond slowing global warming or retreating to higher ground. I couldn’t accept that nearly one-third of humanity should lose their homes and that entire nations should simply cease to exist.
So I applied my engineering background to the problem and conceived the SeaNet Vision—constructing massive inland seas and lakes in arid regions to capture rising oceans. The response has been extraordinary. Climate leaders, government officials, civil engineers, and insurance industry experts are telling me this is the breakthrough solution they’ve been searching for. Now I’m working to turn this vision into reality through my forthcoming book and growing movement of supporters.
Climate Change has become a controversial topic
Are temperatures really rising?
Are the polar ice caps melting?
Is the sea level rising?
How much could it cost to address rising sea level?
According to National Geographic:
Sea levels could rise by 5-15 feet by the end of this century.
If all the ice at the poles melted, the sea level could rise by 230 feet.
Under certain realistic conditions, sea levels could rise by 4-6 feet within a single decade.
Antarctica contains about 90% of the world’s ice.
When will Sea Level Rise truly begin to affect coastal regions of the world?
According to NASA Earth Observatory:
The Maldives could be gone by 2050
According to DW News – Asia:
Indonesia is spending $33 billion to relocate its capital to a new city that will be safe from sea level rise.
According to Channel Four Television Corporation:
Bangladesh is already facing a massive humanitarian crisis as 200,000 additional people have moved to the already overcrowded capital city, Dhaka, because their homes along the coast have been taken by the sea. Some reports also indicate that Bangladesh could lose more than 10% of its usable land by 2050.
According to a Coastal Town in California
Foster City, California (just 7 miles south of San Francisco Airport) spent $111 million over the past decade to protect less than 10-miles of coastal land.
Leading Ideas to Address Sea Level Rise
- Building sea walls, levees and other traditional water management structures.
- Creating large scale floating environments so people can live on the water.
- Building a dam from Gibraltar to Morocco to protect those living around the Mediterranean Sea.
- Building a dam under the Golden Gate Bridge to protect those living in the San Francisco Bay area and Central California.
- Building a mega dam around Antarctica to contain the ice melt.
- Creating global cooling – by using biological components such as mangroves, coral reefs and carbon sinks to pull greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, along with inventing technologies capable of changing the chemical balance of the atmosphere.
- Retreating 1/3 of the worlds population to higher ground.
But do any of these ideas count as solutions? Most will make things worse, but #6 could help.
The SeaNet Vision – Imagine (part 1)
Imagine transforming massive stretches of the Sahara Desert and western Australia — regions now
barren and sparsely inhabited — into thriving, livable landscapes over the next century.
Imagine that by the 2100s, an aerial view of Australia reveals vast expanses of green forests and blue lakes, instead of endless shades of dry, empty earth.