Apparently world leaders should copy Genghis Khan if they believe global warming is a threat

Greg P. | 11:08 AM on January 30, 2018

Want to stop global warming?

If so, stop acting like Al Gore with your mansions and private jet travel to conferences around the world. The secret to saving the planet lies in our past and the policies initiated by the planet’s first environmentalist, Genghis Khan:

HISTORY: Destruction by Genghis Khan and the Mongols led to 700 million tonnes of carbon being scrubbed from the atmosphere, after forests regrew on previously populated and cultivated land.

(Carnegie Institution for Science) pic.twitter.com/jwPYFHhla8

— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) January 17, 2018

Be like Khan and save the planet?

And then, the Black Death raised wages for the survivors. https://t.co/zUttWoPGdV

— Mark Krikorian (@MarkSKrikorian) January 30, 2018

Don’t give them any ideas.

The Khan-theory to environmental health has actually been around for awhile now. From the Guardian in 2011 on “the greatest eco-warrior of all time”:

Genghis Khan, in fact, may have been not just the greatest warrior but the greatest eco-warrior of all time, according to a study by the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Energy. It has concluded that the 13th-century Mongol leader’s bloody advance, laying waste to vast swaths of territory and wiping out entire civilisations en route, may have scrubbed 700m tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere – roughly the quantity of carbon dioxide generated in a year through global petrol consumption – by allowing previously populated and cultivated land to return to carbon-absorbing forest.