In this piece for The Washington Post Magazine, Henry Wismayer takes a tour of what was formerly the Aral Sea, and once the world’s fourth largest inland body of water. “It began, like so many tragedies, with hubris,” writes Wismayer, describing how, in the 1920s, inefficient irrigation projects diverted the region’s rivers to land for cotton. By the 1960s, the Aral’s shoreline had rapidly receded, the fishing industry died overnight, and over time, the evaporation of water not only affected the region’s climate but made the air extremely toxic. Today, the sea’s disappearance is possibly the “worst man-made ecological catastrophe in history” and a “cautionary parable.”
What drives a person to visit such an apocalyptic site? Is this disaster tourism? As Wismayer explores this sea-turned-desert, he thoughtfully ponders these questions.
But the more time I spent in this accursed landscape, the more certain I became that there were other, deeper emotions at play, too. Modern places of abandonment or catastrophe, it occurred to me that evening, were affecting primarily for their immediacy. The ambient entropy, which manifested here in the chaotic climate, the shriveling lake, the junk of human settlements laid waste, felt like the ultimate rebuke to our myopia.
That the Aral Sea represents an advanced stage on a continuum along which the whole planet is hurtling — hotter, water-deprived, despoiled — merely drove the point home. It left you with the sense that, for all our genius, we enjoy a habitable planet by the grace of such fragile providence. Actions, consequences. What more evidence do we need?
