Alternate post titles:
- Where Does Dirt Come From?
- Global Dedirting
- Never Mind Global Warming
- Save That Dirt!
It seems dirt must be an unreplenishable resource. I wonder where it goes. And how long it has been going there. And why I have to keep dusting it off slow-to-sell books and scrubbing it out from between my toes.
Nevertheless, as a public service, here’s the beginning of the article:
| The lowdown on topsoil: It’s disappearing
The planet is getting skinned. While many worry about the potential consequences of atmospheric warming, a few experts are trying to call attention to another global crisis quietly taking place under our feet. Call it the thin brown line. Dirt. On average, the planet is covered with little more than 3 feet of topsoil — the shallow skin of nutrient-rich matter that sustains most of our food and appears to play a critical role in supporting life on Earth. “We’re losing more and more of it every day,” said David Montgomery, a geologist at the University of Washington. “The estimate is that we are now losing about 1 percent of our topsoil every year to erosion, most of this caused by agriculture.” |
Agriculture, eh?
Maybe we should quit eating.
I think that would solve the man-caused global warming issue as well.
Now I’ve got to figure out in what category to place this post . . . .