While most people (who pay attention to such issues, not the others) have been concerned about changes in the atmosphere above, my attention and concern often seem to be drawn in the other direction: looking down and looking forward. All zoological life (i.e. extractors of energy and substance from other living things) begins in the soil. We cannot create Alternative Soil.
When the soil is gone (or enough of it, in quantity or quality) land-based life will have become bankrupt, with nothing to draw from. Technology's miracles will not save us. We would not be the first great human empire to vanish when soils or forests or water was used unsustainably.
And so for my own purposes of comprehending so broad a topic, as I have done before, this morning I created a "Map of Content" if you will. (MOC is a hot topic lately in some geeky circles within my odd info-tech interest areas.)
The main five trunks could become five short shared posts that challenge me to say a lot but enough on each important topic in no more words than the average Substack or Wordpress reader will endure before flipping elsewhere.
So I have told you want I am (maybe) going to tell you, or at least what is at top-of-mind just now.
If you see any glaring omissions in this sparsely-filled-out tree, let me know. It is way easy to make changes using Scapple, the tool I use to create such content-maps.
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In Jared Diamond’s “Collapse” he spoke of the arroyos in New Mexico (or was it Arizona) and pointed to that as evidence that the agricultural collapse there came from the locals using up the aquifer - so excessive irrigation?