Sunday, November 24, 2024
Could the Bison be a solution to desertification and climate change?
Most of you already know that climate change is a natural process. What scientists have been telling us is that this natural process has undergone a gradual change over millennia (thousands of years). But humans have accelerated that change to about 100 years through population growth, air pollution, and deforestation. The forests are Earth's lungs because they take in and store carbon and release oxygen.
There is another storage of carbon that has been overlooked: grasslands. Over the last 10,000 years, humans have been killing off big grass-eating animals. It turns out that this may be a major cause of desertification (when grasslands turn to desert). Disappearing grasslands also put carbon into the atmosphere.
The grasslands have co-evolved with big grass-eating animals like the bison. The bison eat the grasses and turn up the soil with their hooves as they walk. Then they drop urine and poop, which re-fertilizes the grasslands. The bison then move on to untouched grasslands, tractor plowing the land and spreading seeds as they go. Grass needs this process to survive; removing this co-evolutionary force changes the whole system.
Over ten thousand years ago, North America was plowed by elephants, rhinoceroses, camels, horses, and other large grass eaters. Their extinctions were caused by climate change and the impact that the first human settlers made when they arrived from northeast Asia. More recently (hundreds of years ago), the American bison thundered across the plains in the millions, turning over the soil like tractors. The Europeans that migrated to North America killed almost all of them. Now much of that land is farmland, and the remainder is inhabited by smaller grazing animals like the pronghorn.
In the [New State], we will work to reduce and keep the world's human population below 4 billion. Less people means less farmland is needed to feed everyone. This farmland can return to its former natural state to support wildlife, including big roaming animals. This, in turn, will help stabilize the climate and the air we breathe.
There were people over 100 years ago who argued they should be allowed to cut down the great redwoods for profit. They argued that people in the present time (themselves) were more important than people in the future (us).
One of the hazards of democracy in the modern age is that it allows for the selfish interests and sometimes irrational beliefs of people in the present to become policy. For example, in the late 1970s, former president Jimmy Carter had solar panels [a new American invention] installed on the White House roof to demonstrate our nation's commitment to preserving the earth for future generations, only to have them removed by the Reagan administration a few years later. The Reagan administration's excuse was led by the Christian belief that the world was coming to an end soon, so don’t bother with the solar panels.
The world is not coming to an end, but civilizations do come and go. And almost always, they go not because of foreign invaders from afar but because of implosion from within.
Today, the relationship between people's needs and resources is being mismanaged. This is caused by greedy self-interest and the resulting irrational beliefs. This aspect of human nature is caused by evolution. Ignore evolution and evolution could destroy a civilization.
By the way, China is now the largest manufacturer of solar panels in the world. The original White House solar panels are currently on display in a Chinese museum as an example of American stupidity.
ted.com – How to fight desertification and reverse climate change
END
There is another storage of carbon that has been overlooked: grasslands. Over the last 10,000 years, humans have been killing off big grass-eating animals. It turns out that this may be a major cause of desertification (when grasslands turn to desert). Disappearing grasslands also put carbon into the atmosphere.
The grasslands have co-evolved with big grass-eating animals like the bison. The bison eat the grasses and turn up the soil with their hooves as they walk. Then they drop urine and poop, which re-fertilizes the grasslands. The bison then move on to untouched grasslands, tractor plowing the land and spreading seeds as they go. Grass needs this process to survive; removing this co-evolutionary force changes the whole system.
Over ten thousand years ago, North America was plowed by elephants, rhinoceroses, camels, horses, and other large grass eaters. Their extinctions were caused by climate change and the impact that the first human settlers made when they arrived from northeast Asia. More recently (hundreds of years ago), the American bison thundered across the plains in the millions, turning over the soil like tractors. The Europeans that migrated to North America killed almost all of them. Now much of that land is farmland, and the remainder is inhabited by smaller grazing animals like the pronghorn.
In the [New State], we will work to reduce and keep the world's human population below 4 billion. Less people means less farmland is needed to feed everyone. This farmland can return to its former natural state to support wildlife, including big roaming animals. This, in turn, will help stabilize the climate and the air we breathe.
Great Redwood.
There were people over 100 years ago who argued they should be allowed to cut down the great redwoods for profit. They argued that people in the present time (themselves) were more important than people in the future (us).
One of the hazards of democracy in the modern age is that it allows for the selfish interests and sometimes irrational beliefs of people in the present to become policy. For example, in the late 1970s, former president Jimmy Carter had solar panels [a new American invention] installed on the White House roof to demonstrate our nation's commitment to preserving the earth for future generations, only to have them removed by the Reagan administration a few years later. The Reagan administration's excuse was led by the Christian belief that the world was coming to an end soon, so don’t bother with the solar panels.
The world is not coming to an end, but civilizations do come and go. And almost always, they go not because of foreign invaders from afar but because of implosion from within.
Today, the relationship between people's needs and resources is being mismanaged. This is caused by greedy self-interest and the resulting irrational beliefs. This aspect of human nature is caused by evolution. Ignore evolution and evolution could destroy a civilization.
By the way, China is now the largest manufacturer of solar panels in the world. The original White House solar panels are currently on display in a Chinese museum as an example of American stupidity.
ted.com – How to fight desertification and reverse climate change
END