Above the Paving Stones, the Desert—Desertification, drought, & loss of arable land—Ashes Ashes #65
Channel: Stop Fossil Fuels
Date: 2019-03-24

Two-thirds of Spain is at risk of permanent desertification. The cold and wet country of Iceland holds half of all Europe's deserts. China's Gobi Desert is expanding rapidly, swallowing thousands of villages and threatening to envelop the capital city Beijing. In just 40 years a third of the plant's arable land has eroded, and each year desertification destroys the potential to grow 20 million tons of grain.

Once again, a show all about sand, but this time we're not building with it; we're running from it. What are some of the long-term systems that lead to desertification? What are some of the simple causes? And in what ways does human and economic development play a role in this process? 

Podcast by Ashes Ashes, reposted under CC License. Browse episode resources & read full transcript at https://ashesashes.org/blog/episode-65-above-the-paving-stones-the-desert

Stop Fossil Fuels researches and disseminates effective strategies and tactics to halt fossil fuel combustion as fast as possible. Learn more at https://stopfossilfuels.org

CHAPTERS
0:32 Civilizations Rise and Fall
12:00 Spain, Iceland, China, Mongolia
24:54 Global Aridity
31:30 Desertification Causes and Feedbacks
44:28 Land Use
53:07 Incentives
59:09 What can we do?
1:06:55 Carbondale Spring

TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT
David: Civilizations rise and fall, and climate is a big factor in that process. The US NASA Jet Propulsion Lab has used infrared and radar satellite imagery to help researchers explore the buried remains of ancient societies. It appears that drought was the main impetus for the collapse of civilizations in ancient Mesopotamia, several states within the ancient Egyptian hegemony, the Mayan empire, and more.

The Indus Valley to the west of the Himalayas near the Northern India/Pakistan border was home 5,200 years ago to the largest and earliest urban civilizations on Earth, with trade routes linking it with Egypt and Mesopotamia. At one point 10% of the world's population could be found here and despite their prominence, we were not even aware of their existence until the 1920s. Like all ancient civilizations, they rose and then they fell.

Daniel: A 2012 research paper studied the likely cause of the collapse of that Indus Valley Civilization and concluded that climate-related changes, specifically monsoon patterns, were responsible.

David: Liviu Giosan: "These were an enterprising people, taking advantage of a window of opportunity, kind of Goldilocks civilization. As monsoon drying subdued devastating floods, the land nearby the rivers, still fed with water and rich silt, was just right for agriculture. This lasted for almost two thousand years, but continued aridification closed this favorable window in the end." The Earth, over many years of energetic, geological, and biotic activity, accumulated a massive reserve of stored energy and wealth. Humans migrated onto this store of wealth, in this case agricultural productivity, and used it to build up a great civilization. A couple thousand years later, as that wealth became depleted, the structures that humans had built up around it began to deteriorate and eventually collapsed.

In the same way that a city must be supported by a larger footprint of land for agricultural material inputs, global economies need cheap imports of the same things, but on a larger scale. As transportation networks are improved, manufacturing, agriculture, and industry all settle in regions with the cheapest labor, the fewest environmental regulations, and the most pro-business policies.

Pakistan and India are on the brink of war due to their shared water resources in sharp decline, forcing cities to ration their drinking supplies. At the same time much of the clothing that is consumed in the United States is produced with the Pakistani cotton, one of the most water demanding crops. 60% of the global population lives in countries that have to import water in some form.

A difference between the collapse of ancient civilizations and our modern world is what comes after collapse. While ancient climate variability disrupted social structures built up around particular places, people were able to flourish after these institutions faded away. The cities that were built up by the people around the Indus River couldn't be sustained once the river ceased supplying fertile ground for agricultural surpluses, which was necessary for supporting a large urban workforce. Although these cities fell, the people migrated east where more reliable but weaker monsoon patterns enabled small-scale agricultural communities to thrive. But the impact of modern global human development threatens life everywhere.

Daniel: Human development is permanently altering land from being able to support life, to being completely devoid of life. This episode is about deserts, their encroachment, and what leads to them. Let's look at Spain, Iceland, China, Mongolia, the Gobi desert, desertification, the loss of soil, and shrubbery.