It's amazing how little we appreciate his extraordinary achievements.
So how did Genghis Khan... earn such a glowing environmental report card?... [T]he same way he built his empire — with a high body count.In this he set a shining example for today's advocates of DDT-banning in Africa, the one-child policy in China, and abortion everywhere.
Over the course of the century and a half run of the Mongol Empire, about 22 percent of the world's total land area had been conquered and an estimated 40 million people were slaughtered by the horse-driven, bow-wielding hordes. Depopulation over such a large swathe of land meant that countless numbers of cultivated fields eventually returned to forests.
In other words, one effect of Genghis Khan's unrelenting invasion was widespread reforestation, and the re-growth of those forests meant that more carbon could be absorbed from the atmosphere.
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