No joke. Someone who lived here before we arrived told me about this, and I took a look … and it’s true:

To go to the google map of Abu Dhabi, and to hover over the main island of the city, and to blow up the picture … is to be taken aback by how much green is on the ground.

What does that tell us?

If you are a native of southern California, you probably can relate to this: People who live in deserts like to have green growth around them. That’s why Angelenos water their lawns in their semi-arid basin.

Same thing here. Certainly in Abu Dhabi — as opposed to Dubai, up the road, which doesn’t seem to feel this as keenly.

The shiekhs of Abu Dhabi like their green. Parks, for starters. Soccer fields. But also on the medians and shoulders of roads. Grass and copses of trees. And certainly in every neighborhood aside from the very oldest part of the city, which is pretty concrete-y.

And I appreciate the green. Just outside the door of where I live is a 30-yard-wide green strip of trees and grass. If you can find the intersection of 19th (Saada Street) and Airport Road (a major street running from the base to the top of the island), and check the upper-right corner of the four quadrants … that’s where I live. Just below Khalifa Technical School. See all the green?

The only problem with all that green, just as it is in greater Los Angeles, is that it isn’t natural to the region. And it’s even less natural, here.

In SoCal, if you turn over a spade of earth — west of the mountains, anyway — it will have some life to it. Organic matter in there. Maybe some earth worms. Some moisture.

To turn over a shovel here is to come up with sand, sand and more sand. Aside from those areas where topsoil has been brought in, and then repeatedly fertilized throughout the year. But if you scratch the surface at all … there’s the sand again. Vacant lots? Sand, all of them.

The preference for green here is aesthetically pleasing … but probably not sustainable. Every drop of water in the city originates at desalination plants pulling moisture out of the Gulf and pumping the briny residue back into the sea.

Not only is the process slowly killing sea life in the Gulf, it is a tremendously energy-intensive process and a significant contributor to the country’s staggering carbon footprint — the biggest in the world, per capita.

Those patches of grass and the little trees that are so carefully tended, and which do, in fact, make this a better place to live when it is brutally hot … almost certainly not going to stick around.

At sometime in the not-too-distant future the island probably will be back to the sort of rock gardens and water-sipping scrub — if that — that was here before people were. Perhaps a palm tree or three.

It will be sandy and brown, as it was before. I won’t be here for that, and I feel badly in advance for those who see all the green die away … but it seems inevitable.