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Vicious Saudi autocrat Mohamed bin Salman has a new vision for Neom, his plan for a massive, $500 billion, AI-powered, nominally legally independent city-state of the future on the border with Egypt and Jordan. When we last left the crown prince, he had reportedly commissioned 2,300-pages’ worth of proposals from Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Co. and Oliver Wyman boasting of possible amenities like holographic schoolteachers, cloud seeding to create rain, flying taxis, glow-in-the-dark beaches, a giant NASA-built artificial moon, and lots of robots: maids, cage fighters, and dinosaurs.

Now Salman has a bold new idea: One of the cities in Neom is a line. A line roughly 105-miles (170-kilometers) long and a five-minute walk wide, to be exact. No, really, it’s a line. The proposed city is a line that stretches across all of Saudi Arabia. That’s the plan.

“With zero cars, zero streets, and zero carbon emissions, you can fulfill all your daily requirements within a five minute walk,” the crown prince continued. “And you can travel from end to end within 20 minutes.”AdvertisementThe end-to-end in 20 minutes boast likely refers to some form of mass transit that doesn’t yet exist. That works out to a transit system running at about 317 mph (510 kph). That would be much faster than Japan’s famous Shinkansen train network, which is capped at 200 mph (321 kph). Some Japanese rail companies have tested maglev trains that have gone up to 373 mph (600 kph), though it’s nowhere near ready for primetime.

consuming more and more of its precious petroleum resources, and within a decade may have to begin cutting back on its oil exports to the rest of the world

In a recent report entitled, “Burning to Keep Cool: The Hidden Energy Crisis in Saudi Arabia,” Chatham House researchers Glada Lahn and Prof. Paul Stevens said unchecked growth in energy consumption in Saudi Arabia was a “cause for international concern.” If it continues at its present rate, this would threaten the Kingdom’s ability to stabilize world oil markets.

Saudi crude export capacity would fall by about 3 million bpd to under 7 million bpd by 2028 unless domestic energy demand growth is checked

In Qatar, the country with the highest per capita carbon emissions in the world and the biggest producer of liquid gas, the outdoors is already being air conditioned.

The Gulf States are still highly reliant on oil and gas exports, which remain more than 70% of total goods exports in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Oman, and on oil revenues, which exceed 70% of total government revenues in Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain. In Vision 2030, published in 2016, the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, promised to turn the country into a diversified industrial power house. The reality is very different. The World Bank shows Saudi Arabia is still 75% dependent on oil exports for its budget.

The Middle East is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world. By the end of the century, if the more dire predictions prove true, Mecca may not be habitable, making the summer Haj a pilgrimage of peril, even catastrophe

Another large-scale solar desalination project is currently under construction in Saudi Arabia and scheduled for completion in early 2017. The plant is slated to produce 60,000 cubic meters of water per day for Al Khafji City in North Eastern Saudi Arabia, ensuring a constant water supply to the arid region throughout the year. According to Abengoa, the Spanish renewable energy company building the pioneering facility, the incorporation of solar would significantly reduce operating costs, as Saudi Arabia currently burns 1.5 million barrels of oil per day at its desalination plants, which provide 50-70 percent of its drinking water. Total desalination demand in Saudi Arabia and neighboring countries is expected to reach 110 million cubic meters a day by 2030.

“If they think they will build a nuclear reactor here, the Bani Hassan tribe will go nuclear,”

Irhamouna (or give us a break), a loose grouping of prominent Mafraq citizens, geologists, lawyers and youth activists who have mobilised against the planned nuclear reactor

With the presence of grey water produced by the nearby Khirbet Al Samra Wastewater Treatment Plant for reactor cooling, JAEC maintains that the Mafraq site became the only suitable alternative.

Scorching temperatures are already standard for people living in the Arabian Gulf, but by the end of the century parts of the region could become so hot that it will be impossible for humans to spend time outside

if climate change continues at the same pace the severe conditions that now happen roughly once every 20 summer days will become a normal occurrence

potential danger for the millions of Muslims attending the annual pilgrimage of Hajj

Decaying oil tankers at the coasts of Yemen pose serious risks to the environment and the people depending on it, reminding us starkly how conflicts can bring serious pollution risks. New open source research by PAX reveals multiple oil spills from rusty ships that have been polluting the coastal areas around the Port of Aden. If no action is taken by the authorities to remove these ships, it is only a matter of time before a new disaster will unfold.

Current international attention is mainly focused on finding a solution for the decaying oil tanker FSO SAFER loaded with 1.1 million barrels of oil. The tanker is at risk of sinking or exploding, which would create a regional environmental catastrophe. Yet over the course of the last years, smaller incidents around oil tankers in Yemen’s ports, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden have been mounting as well. Ranging from direct attacks on oil tankers to abandoned ships sinking and fires at port refineries, the conflict continues to create serious local pollution problems.

The war itself already poses serious environmental challenges that impact both Yemen’s population and its precious ecosystems. This ranges from structural leaking oil incidents documented by the Yemen environmentalist group Holmakhdar and the Sanaa Center, to broader environmental problems, and conflict-linked cutting and dying of millions of date palms, demonstrated by the open-source investigative group Bellingcat. The current weak state of governance and oversight around the many environmental challenges Yemen is facing continues to result in ongoing incidents that worsen the state of environment and affect the people depending on it.  Not only does this currently already lead to mounting environmental health risks and degraded ecosystems, these impacts will also worsen climate resilience for the conflict-affected country due to more extreme weather events, water shortages and rising temperatures