Learning from Dogs

The third chapter of Lester Brown‘s book, World on the Edge.

This pivotal book is being explore for you, dear reader, chapter by chapter.  Chapter One set the background, Chapter Two looked at Falling Water Tables and Shrinking Harvests, this next Chapter looks at the land itself.

Chapter Three, Eroding Soils and Expanding Deserts.

• On March 20th, 2010 a huge and suffocating dust storm first affected 250 million people in Eastern China before moving on to
  

  No sustenance here!

  South Korea.  It was described by the Korean Meteorological Administration (KMA) as the worst dust storm on record.

• The thin layer of topsoil that covers the earth’s land surface is typically measured in inches and is the foundation of our civilization.
• Journalist Stephen Leahy writes in Earth Island Journal that soil erosion is “the silent global crisis.” A gradual, unobserved process that has potentially catastrophic consequences if ignored for too long.
• Today, roughly a third of the world’s cropland is losing topsoil at an excessive rate.
• Studies on soil erosion in the U.S. shows that for every inch of topsoil lost, wheat and corn crop yields declined by 6 percent.
• A U.S. Embassy report entitled, “Desert Mergers and Acquisitions” describes satellite images showing two deserts in north-central China expanding and merging to form a single, larger desert overlapping Inner Mongolia and Gansu Provinces.
• India, with scarcely 2 percent of the world’s land area, is struggling to support 17 percent of the world’s people and 18 percent of its cattle.
• According to scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation, 24 percent of India’s land area is slowly turning into desert.
• As countries lose their topsoil, they eventually lose the capacity to feed themselves.
• Countries facing this problem include Lesotho, Haiti, Mongolia, and North Korea.

As this chapter concludes, “the health of the people cannot be separated from the health of the land itself.”

Human Activities

OK, another grim chapter covered in this series simply to underscore the grave seriousness that our beautiful planet faces if it is to continue to sustain all our peoples.  Lester Brown says that now, not tomorrow or the next day, now is the time to change direction, to stop the wholesale destruction of the very environment that we all, yes ALL OF US, depend on for our existence.  It has to be done radically and passionately.

But the book ultimately carries an extremely positive second half.  That there is a Plan B that is viable, achievable and cost-effective, and that many countries are committed to making a life-saving difference.  So while these posts carry some pretty grim messages, and will for a while, please remain hopeful and positive that you, and I, and all those around us, can make a difference once we know what to do.