Consume and dump is practised by all life on Earth.
The only difference with ourselves and other animals is that we frequently consume produce from the soil and return our waste to the ocean either directly or via streams and rivers, and no matter how we try to fool ourselves with elaborate water treatment processes, we simply cannot disguise the fact that our bodily waste and the water we waste in our homes should be returned back to the soil.
Current treatment processes involve either aeration or anaerobic digestion from bacteria and the resulting chemical reactions to destroy most of the harmful pathogens and odours, both of which emit CO2 into the atmosphere. The same can be said for natural composting within the soil, although dry composting does not involve wasting billions of cubic kilometres of highly processed drinking water as a vessel to move our waste from A to B.
When we import grain, fruit, timber etc we are effectively importing all of the water and nutrients used to grow these products and often with dire consequences for the exporting countries as we continually deplete their ground water reserves and plunder humus and nutrients from their fragile soils.
We then sell these countries chemical fertilizers in a bid to address this imbalance and of course make a buck or three from their toils.
End result of this practice is civilisation collapse, as demonstrated by all great past civilisations.
We have even reduced the most intelligent of all species to following our pet dogs around with plastic bags to pick up their poop, which is understandable in our concrete cities but in the open countryside? Better to flick it off the path with a stick perhaps?
What we need to do right now is to add a spoonful of common sense into our habitual one way global environmental suicide pact and begin to address the massive losses of arable land and forestry. Some of these exposed soils have taken thousands of years to develop and a few flash floods along with wind erosion and exposure to the sun can destroy the lands turned over to grass crops within 5-10 years rendering it into unusable desert.
We have one shot at getting this right and to do so we need to close our one way unsustainable trading chains by returning our used water, humus and nutrients back to where the soils are baron to increase the production of the materials we need to sustain our lives. I do not want my grandaughter to watch millions of people around the world eating dirt and perishing in relentless drought and famine as we say in the Great Ethiopian and Somalian Famine. I do not want her to see the winds blow away top soil in great dust clouds, destroying the lives of the people that destroyed the soils. I do not want her to see wars over dwindling water supplies and oceans full of rotting fish from pollution. I do not want her to see wild fires ravaging the last remnants of once great forests and great areas of productive land submerged beneath the rising ocean.
This is why http://operationoasis.com was conceived and should we succeed in demonstrating a pilot this simple, feasible and common sense approach to already in place trading practices can be rolled out on every shore affected by waste water pollution or desertification.
The question is how long will it take to fire up the will and release the modest finances required to turn this dire environmental apocalypse around?
No time left for talking and thinking, the preserved mummies of farmers who ignore the need to manage soil sustainably are in the sands of the Atacama desert. Can we not learn from history?
Andrew K Fletcher
The only difference with ourselves and other animals is that we frequently consume produce from the soil and return our waste to the ocean either directly or via streams and rivers, and no matter how we try to fool ourselves with elaborate water treatment processes, we simply cannot disguise the fact that our bodily waste and the water we waste in our homes should be returned back to the soil.
Current treatment processes involve either aeration or anaerobic digestion from bacteria and the resulting chemical reactions to destroy most of the harmful pathogens and odours, both of which emit CO2 into the atmosphere. The same can be said for natural composting within the soil, although dry composting does not involve wasting billions of cubic kilometres of highly processed drinking water as a vessel to move our waste from A to B.
When we import grain, fruit, timber etc we are effectively importing all of the water and nutrients used to grow these products and often with dire consequences for the exporting countries as we continually deplete their ground water reserves and plunder humus and nutrients from their fragile soils.
We then sell these countries chemical fertilizers in a bid to address this imbalance and of course make a buck or three from their toils.
End result of this practice is civilisation collapse, as demonstrated by all great past civilisations.
We have even reduced the most intelligent of all species to following our pet dogs around with plastic bags to pick up their poop, which is understandable in our concrete cities but in the open countryside? Better to flick it off the path with a stick perhaps?
What we need to do right now is to add a spoonful of common sense into our habitual one way global environmental suicide pact and begin to address the massive losses of arable land and forestry. Some of these exposed soils have taken thousands of years to develop and a few flash floods along with wind erosion and exposure to the sun can destroy the lands turned over to grass crops within 5-10 years rendering it into unusable desert.
We have one shot at getting this right and to do so we need to close our one way unsustainable trading chains by returning our used water, humus and nutrients back to where the soils are baron to increase the production of the materials we need to sustain our lives. I do not want my grandaughter to watch millions of people around the world eating dirt and perishing in relentless drought and famine as we say in the Great Ethiopian and Somalian Famine. I do not want her to see the winds blow away top soil in great dust clouds, destroying the lives of the people that destroyed the soils. I do not want her to see wars over dwindling water supplies and oceans full of rotting fish from pollution. I do not want her to see wild fires ravaging the last remnants of once great forests and great areas of productive land submerged beneath the rising ocean.
This is why http://operationoasis.com was conceived and should we succeed in demonstrating a pilot this simple, feasible and common sense approach to already in place trading practices can be rolled out on every shore affected by waste water pollution or desertification.
The question is how long will it take to fire up the will and release the modest finances required to turn this dire environmental apocalypse around?
No time left for talking and thinking, the preserved mummies of farmers who ignore the need to manage soil sustainably are in the sands of the Atacama desert. Can we not learn from history?
Andrew K Fletcher
