“normal life”
WTF does that even mean in a greenhouse-future?
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“Normal life”? Apparently this:
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It is an annual event, to have the loess from the Gobi desert besiege Beijing.
It is not new.
Sandstorms are not unusual for Beijing in springtime, due to the proximity of the Gobi desert. Deforestation and soil erosion throughout northern China also contribute largely to the problem, Reuters reported.
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True, those sandstorms are not new - but they are trying to stop it:
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DO NOT TAKE MY COFFEE!!! NEED MY COFFEE!!! AAAAUUUUGH!!!
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Yeah, that’s me.
The horror. The horror.
And a split second later: oh noes!.. chocolate.
Some friends in central Texas have greenhouses. I am trying to persuade them to try to grow a few Camellia sinensis (tea) and/or Coffea plants just to see if it can be done. These industries are profitable and huge. I expect agriscience is not going to leave us coffee-less. Too many addicts–myself included–and too much money to be made… but at what price?
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Can’t breath the air? Meh
Can’t drink the water? Meh
Too damn hot? Meh
No more coffee? OHHHHH SHIT!
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China’s been working on this project
for years. Success has been a mixed bag.
Precisely speaking, many of the trees that are planted in areas where they do not grow naturally simply perish after a few years. Those that do survive can soak up a lot of the groundwater that the native grasses and shrubs need, causing more soil degradation. If afforestation continually exceeds the land’s carrying capacity, it will lead the trees to an eventual death. Thus it is difficult to determine whether or not the the China Green Wall is helping or hurting local ecosystems; a 2014 study of China’s major trees planting programmes by a group of American and Chinese scientists concluded that “the extent to which the programmes have changed local ecological and socioeconomic conditions are still poorly understood, as local statistics are often not available or unreliable.”
Don’t get me wrong: this project is Ambitious with a capital A:
NB: getting information about the Great Green Wall project from a source unlikely to be controlled by Chinese state government offers the possibility of better objectivity when it comes to reporting on this project’s progress.
So much to commend it, if it is done properly. Improvements in air and soil and water quality, sequestration of carbon, local jobs, habitat restoration… etc. But the tree species selection in this reforestation attempt has been questioned, especially when Chinese project managers are choosing fast-growing non-natives. And the ability to water and protect seedlings is another make-or-break. Nature is unkind sometimes, and doesn’t rain on a schedule, or in correct amounts at correct intervals. (I plant trees every year. I started 45 years ago. Some habitats are harder than others to keep trees alive in.)
The Great Green Wall program was designed to reverse decades of desertification. As deserts expanded in China, they helped feed enormous dust storms — “yellow dragons” — that still routinely clog the air in Beijing and as far away as Korea. The Great Green Wall was aimed at quickly turning back the spread of desert by planting fast-growing trees, such as aspen, that would rapidly establish deep webs of soil-stabilizing roots and form a shady canopy. The new forest could also potentially provide some local economic benefits in the form of wood fiber for paper pulp or building materials.
Even though they were being planted in a semi-arid region where historically grassy steppe prevailed, the trees appeared to be a suitable choice, since they were able to tap water stored deep in soils.
Nevertheless, says David Shankman — a geographer at the University of Alabama and a co-author of the study — over years or decades the plantings have tended to eventually deplete local soil moisture and die en masse simply because the planted species “are not native to the region, and don’t tolerate local conditions.”
Invasive exotics species (or as a teacher once corrected me “opportunistic colonizers”) can take over an ecosystem… even one that is not fragile and stressed out. Think: kudzu in the U.S (caution: depressing pictures).
A quick word about ecological understanding of whole systems, versus basing one’s actions on imperfect perception, from Chinese history. Mao Zedong had this idea and exhorted his countrymen to pursue it with vigor:
Effects
By April 1960, Chinese leaders changed their opinion in part due to the influence of ornithologist Tso-hsin Cheng[6] who pointed out that sparrows ate a large number of insects, as well as grains.[7][8] While the campaign was meant to increase yields, concurrent droughts and floods as well as the lacking sparrow population decreased rice yields.[8][9] In the same month, Mao Zedong ordered the campaign against sparrows to end. Sparrows were replaced with bed bugs, as the extermination of sparrows had upset the ecological balance, which subsequently resulted in surging locust and insect populations that destroyed crops due to a lack of a natural predator.[10][11]
With no sparrows to eat them, locust populations ballooned, swarming the country and compounding the ecological problems already caused by the Great Leap Forward, including widespread deforestation and misuse of poisons and pesticides.[9] Ecological imbalance is credited with exacerbating the Great Chinese Famine.[12][13] The Chinese government eventually resorted to importing 250,000 sparrows from the Soviet Union to replenish their population.[14]
tl;dr: increased famine stemming from ignorance of how natural systems work.
Just sayin’ that state programs and projects can and do go horribly wrong. Not news, I realize.
Possible big picture, in the interest of closing on an upnote:
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Regarding trees, Vox did a video about why planting trees is not a panacea because of disproportionate wealth distribution. Poor people who mostly live in the regions devoid of trees (and not by choice) can’t afford to keep the trees alive.
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Just some lighthearted humor, appropriate for so many threads but this was the most obvious:
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The engineering firm I work for has been, for well over a decade now, advocating for equity and city-spending for areas of Austin that have been historically disadvantaged.
A report I reviewed this week had much to say about inequities inside the city limits (the scope of the report), and I was proud of the many citations that support truly sound reasons for making all of Austin livable, not just the rich parts of town.
We don’t get final edit–that’s up to the firm we subcontract for. We did go on the record, and we did say the words, and I am very lucky to work in an office where
is not just a topic for discussion, but a situation to be addressed, not ignored.
We can do better.
We must do better.
I love the mission of this Central Texas nonprofit:
Sometimes, they work with this group, esp. when planting fruit trees:
There are grants and other resources typically involved in projects planted in the regions you mention:
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