Cows Save the Planet: And Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth

Synopsis

In Cows Save the Planet, journalist Judith D. Schwartz looks at soil as a crucible for our many overlapping environmental, economic, and social crises. Schwartz reveals that for many of these problems—climate change, desertification, biodiversity loss, droughts, floods, wildfires, rural poverty, malnutrition, and obesity—there are positive, alternative scenarios to the degradation and devastation we face. In each case, our ability to turn these crises into opportunities depends on how we treat the soil. Drawing on the work of thinkers and doers, renegade scientists and institutional whistleblowers from around the world, 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.

Copyright:

2013

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9781603584333

Related ISBNs:

9781603584326

Publisher:

Chelsea Green Publishing

Date of Addition:

08/02/18

Copyrighted By:

Judith Schwartz, Gretel Ehrlich

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Cooking, Food and Wine, Technology, Social Studies, Earth Sciences

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.