When the sun shines, the soil cracks and dries to be blown away by the wind. There is little to eat and what there is grows scantier yearly. This could be your home after the world s last tree has been cut. You may think that people would never allow trees to disappear completely but there is no sign yet of sanity being restored. Moreover the desert scenario is in line with what we know about deforestation.
Trees act as sponges soaking up the rain and releasing it slowly in hot weather.
When they are removed the earth is left exposed to be attacked by wind and rain. All over the Alps in Central Europe, steel and concrete barriers have been erected to do the work that trees once did by binding the soil and preventing avalanches. And many climatologists now agree that the obliteration of tropical forests will change the weather. When the forests are felled or burned they release carbon dioxide which traps heat. This results in a warming of the earth s surface called the greenhouse effect which on a large scale could be sufficiently powerful to bring drought to much of the Northern Hemisphere.