| Description |
xv, 220 pages ; 23 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-212) and index. |
| Contents |
Ground zero for carbon dioxide reduction is the ground -- Carbon trading: nature's version -- The making and unmaking of deserts: the grazing paradox -- The return of lost water -- Beyond eat your vegetables -- The more the merrier: biodiversity starts in the soil -- The soil grab -- Floods, drought, and the Grasslands, LLC, experiment -- The soil standard. |
| Summary |
In Cows Save the Planet, journalist Judith D. Schwartz looks at soil as a crucible for our many overlapping environmental, economic, and social crises. Drawing on the work of thinkers and doers, renegade scientists and institutional whistleblowers, Schwartz challenges much of the conventional thinking about global warming and other problems. For example, land can suffer from undergrazing as well as overgrazing, since certain landscapes, such as grasslands, require the disturbance from livestock to thrive. Regarding climate, when we focus on carbon dioxide, we neglect the central role of water in soil - "green water" - in temperature regulation. And much of the carbon dioxide that burdens the atmosphere is not the result of fuel emissions, but from agriculture; returning carbon to the soil not only reduces carbon dioxide levels but also enhances soil fertility. Cows Save the Planet is at once a primer on soil's pivotal role in our ecology and economy, a call to action, and an antidote to the despair that environmental news so often leaves us with. |
| Subject |
Soil ecology.
|
|
Soil restoration.
|
| ISBN |
9781603584326 paperback |
|
1603584323 paperback |
|
