Soil

Soil...

Soils contain more carbon than our atmosphere and forests together.

Soils hold over twice as much water as our rivers and atmosphere combined.

Capturing rain where it falls is the key to preventing most floods.

More carbon is stored in soil worldwide than is found in the atmosphere and the planet’s biomass together.

"Destruction of the earth's thin living cover is proceeding at a rate and on a scale unparalleled in history, and when that thin cover -- the soil -- is gone, the fertile regions where it formerly lay will be uninhabitable deserts."

The Rape of the Earth: A World Survey of Soil Erosion, by Jacks and Whyte, published in 1939.

Around 2bn ha of soil, 15% of the Earth's surface, is now classed as degraded by human activities

BBC News, 2002

The debate has been cast in the wrong terms.  The problem cannot be solved if we keep asking: ‘What energy sources will be available to replace fossil fuels?’ We should ask: what populations can be supported at a decent standard by the energy sources available after the transition from fossil fuels?

Lindsey Grant, The Collapsing Bubble

...  because of misuse, every year we lose a hundred million acres of farmland and 24 billion tons of topsoil, and create 15 million acres of desert around the world.....  mankind is using about 160 billion tons more water each year than is being replenished by rain and fed back into water storage....  sustainability is not enough.  We need to be concerned with survivability

.... In the last half century, the Earth has lost a fourth of its topsoil and third of its forest cover.  We are losing fresh water at the rate of 6% per year.  A third of the world’s natural resources were consumed in the last three decades. Most were consumed by the billion people in the rich countries