Originally Posted By HongKongDisneyLand The surface of the Aral Sea, which has been shrinking since 1960, is now 50 percent smaller because nature has not been able to keep up with the pace of irrigation. And over in the Far East, a portion of the South China Sea called Penny's Bay, is gone - filled in for Hong Kong Disneyland, which opened last fall.
Originally Posted By RandySavage The death of the Aral Sea and the the reclamation of a bay for HKDL should never be considered in the same paragraph, much less the same category. Ecologists, biologists and health experts around the world agree that the killing of the Aral Sea is probably the worst human-induced environmental disasters in history. Beginning in the 1950s, the Soviet government began industrial cotton agriculture in the arid Aral region of Central Asia, ciphering off water from the Amu and Syr rivers that feed the Aral Sea. Over the past 50 years, the once-thriving Aral Sea fish populations and cannery towns have been completely annihilated. Half of what was once a flourishing inland sea is now a lifeless, poisonous saline desert where winds blow carcenogenic fertilzer and pesticide-laden dust across the few human settlements that remain. The Aral Sea is now one of the worst, most inhospitable, most polluted places on earth for both man and animal. The Aral Sea is a tragedy - a product man's short-sightedness, hubris, greed, what-have-you. While designed first and foremost to make money, HKDL does so by striving to create feelings of delight and "magic" in patrons. While it might have some negative effects on the local environment or culture, overall HKDL should be chalked up as a positive human endeavor.
