Fran Farmer wrote:
On 5/03/2015 3:24 AM, songbird wrote:
Fran Farmer wrote:


Greece too used to well covered with trees in ancient times and now much
of it is like parts of Oz - olives and poor land because the top soil
went along with the trees.

the Greeks and Romans did quite a number, but it just followed
on the agricultural practices of peoples in the middle east or
northern Africa. however, by upping the extractive practices a
notch and never returning organic materials to the soils they
soon stripped the topsoils bare.

when you have renters instead of owners there is little incentive
to treat the land well.

Well the Greeks were the owners and they screwed their own topsoil and I
can't see that modern agriculture is a great deal different. To much of
it is like strip mining over a long term.

not nearly as badly during that time period as
compared to what came afterwards when they were
taken over by the Romans, and the same thing
goes for much of the rest of Europe, northern
Africa, etc. the Romans turned marginal lands into
deserts because they exported so much grain and
ruined the croplands to do it.

many of those areas have never had a chance to
recover. the remaining people who could survive did
so by keeping goats, counting much of their wealth by
the number of animals, not by improvements in topsoil
or pasture diversity.


the overall culture must change to get land restoration to
work over the longer term.

Yep.

What you had to say was both interesting and relevant IMO. I agree with
you about trees. I'm always propagating trees of some sort or other.
And even if we just restricted the planting of trees to urban areas
because they are so good for shade and lowering the temperatures in the
city deserts, then I'd still see the value in what you have to say.
But we certainly need far more trees on this planet. We could get rid
of at least 50% of the population and we'd still have too many humans.

until more people start dying from ecosytem failures
i don't see much changing on the larger scale.

Many people are already dying from ecosytem failures.

not nearly as many as what will be coming.


We well fed rich
******* in the western world just aren't listening and nor do we care so
long as we can still get cheap shoddy products from whatever low wage
country can be convinced to take on the job.

sadly, ******* is a very apt word for what
happens to most of that junk too.

if we could get to a more heavily recycled system
i wouldn't mind it as much, but we're still a long
ways from what it should be.


there are localised small patches where people are
working to restore and improve things, but it isn't
yet a large enough effort to counter the destroyers and
poisoners.

Nope. Denial and/or ignorance and/or self interest is alive and well
and living amongst us.

i keep hoping for bigger changes. a lot of people
want them to happen too, but it isn't a majority yet.


songbird