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"In a delicious irony, Abu Dhabi is pouring oil billions into a zero-emissions metropolis in the desert.....:"

ECO-OASIS IN ABU DHABI

"There's a former nursery across from the royal family's private terminal at the Abu Dhabi airport. It doesn't look like much now -- 1,600 acres of sand dotted with small, forlorn trees. But one fenced-in spot on the property hints of a plan so ambitious that it stands out even in a land of seemingly limitless wealth. There, atop concrete slabs, engineers are preparing to test solar collectors. Those collectors are scheduled to power a futuristic 100,000-resident city that will rise from this sandy wasteland by the Persian Gulf. The goal: to create the world's first metropolis that emits not a single extra molecule of carbon dioxide, the cause of global warming.

It's a delicious irony that the Middle East, awash in oil and dollars -- Abu Dhabi alone has nearly 100 billion barrels in reserves -- may be the one region on earth most capable of building the first city for a post-oil world. ...." read the rest of this great article by Stanley Reed here at Speigel Online International.