Like climate change seems really easy to solve if we just plant a bunch of jojoba bushes in the Mojave desert.
Also it’s the easiest thing to get the billionaires on board. Argue we are learning how to terraform Mars and suddenly Bezos and Musks’s meats would be spinning.
You make a great point, though I still think that desert "terraforming" technology or, more accurately, a way to reverse desertification, is a sorely needed thing in the coming century. While long-lasting stable desert ecosystems should be seen as sacrosanct and worthy of preservation as any other wild ecology, there is more than enough previously fertile land that through over-exploitation and carelessness has become barren. If humanity collectively focused on just that it would still be a colossal amount of work in the next 100 or so years.
As to the Gobi project, my understanding is that its main goal is to reverse desertification and hold on to as much as possible in the coming climate collapse. Would appreciate any more information you have though, I'm by no means knowledgeable enough to make speak with certainty on it.