Soil Erosion May Get Us Before Climate Change Does

- by Richard Reese, Decem­ber 1, 2014, Resilience

Out­side the entrance of the glo­ri­ous Hall of West­ern His­to­ry are the mar­ble lions, col­or­ful ban­ners, and huge stone columns. Step inside, and the pop­u­lar exhibits include ancient Egypt, clas­si­cal Greece, the Roman Empire, the Renais­sance, Guten­berg, Mag­el­lan, Colum­bus, Galileo, and so on. If we cut a hole in the fence, and sneak around to the rear of the build­ing, we find the dump­sters, dere­licts, mangy dogs, and envi­ron­men­tal history.

The Dar­win of envi­ron­men­tal his­to­ry was George Perkins Marsh, who pub­lished Man and Nature in 1864 (free down­load). Few edu­cat­ed peo­ple today have ever heard of this vision­ary. Inspired by Marsh, Wal­ter Low­der­milk, of the Soil Con­ser­va­tion Ser­vice, grabbed his cam­era and vis­it­ed the sites of old civ­i­liza­tions in 1938 and 1939. He cre­at­ed a provoca­tive 44-page report, Con­quest of the Land Through Sev­en Thou­sand Years (free down­load). The gov­ern­ment dis­trib­uted over a mil­lion copies of it.

Low­der­milk helped inspire Tom Dale of the Soil Con­ser­va­tion Ser­vice, and Ver­non Gill Carter of the Nation­al Wildlife Fed­er­a­tion, to write Top­soil and Civ­i­liza­tion, pub­lished in 1955 (free down­load). Both orga­ni­za­tions coop­er­at­ed in the pro­duc­tion of this book. Fol­low­ing the hor­ror show of the Dust Bowl, they were on a mis­sion from God to pro­mote soil conservation.

Dust Bowl pho­to gallery: Wash­ing­ton D.C. dust storm 1935. Approach­ing dust storm. Dust Bowl farm yard. The after­math.

Civ­i­liza­tion its own worst enemy

The book’s intro­duc­tion gets direct­ly to the point, “The very achieve­ments of civ­i­lized man have been the most impor­tant fac­tors in the down­fall of civ­i­liza­tions.” Civ­i­lized man had the tools and intel­li­gence need­ed “to domes­ti­cate or destroy a great part of the plant and ani­mal life around him.” He excelled at exploit­ing nature.

His chief trou­bles came from his delu­sions that his tem­po­rary mas­ter­ship was per­ma­nent. He thought of him­self as “mas­ter of the world,” while fail­ing to under­stand ful­ly the laws of nature.

Read­ers are tak­en on a thrilling tour of the civ­i­liza­tions of antiq­ui­ty. We learn how they devel­oped new and inno­v­a­tive strate­gies for self-destruc­tion. Stops include Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Mediter­ranean basin, Greece, Chi­na, India, and oth­ers. No soci­ety col­laps­es because of a sin­gle rea­son, but declin­ing soil health is always promi­nent among the usu­al sus­pects — no food, no civ.

The civ­i­liza­tion of Egypt was the odd­ball. It thrived longest because of the unique char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Nile Val­ley. Then, in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment stran­gled the gold­en goose by build­ing dams, which end­ed the annu­al appli­ca­tions of fer­tile silt, led to soil destruc­tion, and shift­ed the sys­tem into self-destruct mode.

Mesopotamia (Iraq) was home to a series of civ­i­liza­tions that depend­ed on irri­ga­tion. Cre­at­ing and main­tain­ing irri­ga­tion canals required an immense amount of man­u­al labor, which legions of slaves were unhap­py to pro­vide. At the head­wa­ters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, defor­esta­tion and over­graz­ing led to grow­ing soil ero­sion, which flowed down­stream, reg­u­lar­ly clog­ging the canals. Erod­ed soils have filled in 130 miles (209 km) of the Per­sian Gulf. Today, the pop­u­la­tion in this region is only a quar­ter of what it was 4,000 years ago.

An oldie but a good­ie: Top­soil and Civ­i­liza­tion by Ver­non Gill Carter and Tom Dale, Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa Press, 1974. Avail­able by free down­load or on Ama­zon.

Over the cen­turies, the region of Mesopotamia was con­quered and lost many, many times. For the most part, replen­ish­ing soil fer­til­i­ty with manure and oth­er fer­til­iz­ers was a fair­ly recent invention.

The glo­ry that was Rome, the longevi­ty that is China

In the old days, an effec­tive solu­tion to soil deple­tion was to expand into less spoiled lands, and kill any­one who object­ed. Through­out the book, the num­ber of wars is stun­ning. The tra­di­tion of farm­ing is a bloody one. It always dam­ages the soil, soon­er or lat­er, which makes long-term sta­bil­i­ty impos­si­ble, and guar­an­tees conflict.

Rome, Greece, and oth­er Mediter­ranean civ­i­liza­tions were all burnouts, trashed by a com­bi­na­tion of heavy win­ter rains, slop­ing lands, over­graz­ing, defor­esta­tion, soil deple­tion and malar­ia. The leg­endary cedars of Lebanon once cov­ered more than a mil­lion acres (404,000 ha). Today, just four tiny groves survive.

“Defor­esta­tion and the scav­enger goats brought on most of the ero­sion which turned Lebanon into a well-rained-on desert.” Much of once-lush Pales­tine, “land of milk and hon­ey,” has been reduced to a rocky desert.

Adria was an island in the Adri­at­ic Sea, near the mouth of the Po Riv­er in Italy. Erod­ing soils from upstream even­tu­al­ly con­nect­ed the island to the main­land. Today, Adria is a farm town, 15 miles (24 km) from the sea, and its ancient streets are buried under 15 feet (4.5 m) of erod­ed soil.

In Syr­ia, the palaces of Anti­och were buried under 28 feet (8.5 m) of silt. In North Africa, the ruins of Uti­ca were 30 feet (9 m) below.

Even now, in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, there are dream­ers who pur­port that Chi­na pro­vides a glow­ing exam­ple of sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture — 4,000 years of farm­ers liv­ing in per­fect har­mo­ny with the land. Chap­ter 11 pro­vides a sil­ver bul­let cure for these fan­tas­tic illu­sions. “Ero­sion con­tin­ues to ruin much of the land, reduc­ing Chi­na, as a whole, to the sta­tus of a poor coun­try with poor and under­nour­ished peo­ple, main­ly because the land has been mis­used for so long.”

Save the swales

The authors aim flood­lights on the fun­da­men­tal defects of civ­i­liza­tion, and then hero­ical­ly reveal the bril­liant solu­tion, soil conservation.

Their kinky fan­ta­sy was per­ma­nent agri­cul­ture, which could feed a grad­u­al­ly grow­ing crowd for the next 10,000 years — a bil­lion well-fed Amer­i­cans enjoy­ing a con­tin­u­ous­ly improv­ing stan­dard of liv­ing. Their vision went far beyond con­ser­va­tion, which mere­ly slowed the destruc­tion. Their vision was about harm­less per­pet­u­al growth, ful­ly devel­op­ing all resources, bring­ing pros­per­i­ty to one and all, for­ev­er. Oy!

At the same time, they were excru­ci­at­ing­ly aware that humankind was rav­aging the land.

The fact is that there has prob­a­bly been more man-induced ero­sion over the world as a whole dur­ing the past cen­tu­ry than dur­ing any pre­ced­ing thou­sand-year peri­od. There are many rea­sons for the recent rapid accel­er­a­tion of ero­sion, but the prin­ci­pal rea­sons are that the world has more peo­ple and the peo­ple are more civ­i­lized and hence are capa­ble of destroy­ing the land faster.

The book is more than a lit­tle bit bipolar.

For read­ers who enjoy the delights of mind-alter­ing expe­ri­ences, I rec­om­mend Top­soil and Civ­i­liza­tion, a dis­course on soil min­ing. Also read its shad­ow, a dis­course on for­est min­ing, A For­est Jour­ney, by John Per­lin. Your belief sys­tem will go into con­vul­sions, and then a beau­ti­ful heal­ing process begins.

You will sud­den­ly under­stand that the stuff you were taught about the won­ders of civ­i­liza­tion was an incred­i­bly delu­sion­al fairy tale.

The real sto­ry is one of thou­sands of years of accel­er­at­ing pop­u­la­tion growth, ruth­less greed, count­less wars, enor­mous suf­fer­ing, and cat­a­stroph­ic eco­cide. Sud­den­ly, the pain of baf­fling con­tra­dic­tions is cured, the world snaps into sharp focus, and the pain of being ful­ly present in real­i­ty begins — use­ful pain that can inspire learn­ing and change. Live well.