Plan B 4.0 Chapter 2

While reading this chapter of the book I had mixed feelings on it.  It is concentrated on the changes the Earth is facing dealing with its land and water use.  The first section of the chapter, named Civilization's Foundation Eroding, mostly talked about the Middle East and Asia and how they have been experiencing severe dust storms.  It says these storms are created due to the top layer of soil not being rooted into the ground.  This soil is caught up in blowing winds and taken up into the air and then dispersed across a different area of the world.  Some of the more impressive statistics that were given were that the storms have increased by 4000% over the past 50 years and there have been an estimated 124 villages, in Iran alone, that have had to be deserted due to these dust storms.

My opinion on this issue is that it needs to stop.  The question is though, how can it be stopped?  Deserts in that area are expanding closer and closer together, creating super deserts.  The deserts will keep expanding because the amount of water people keep using along with the over farming of crop lands.  A simple solution would be to cut back, right? WRONG! Within the next 50 years the world's population is estimated to grow by 3 billion people and most of this growth is expected to happen in that Middle Eastern/Asian areas of the world. Cutting back on these people's source of nutrients would in turn create a massive amount of starving humans.

My conclusion after reading this part of the chapter, is that there truly are no answers.  We can cut back water and land use, but the side effect of this would be that the growing population of people would then begin to starve and die by the thousands.  Another option is that we keep using the water, as well as over farming the land, which in turn will create super deserts and more dust storms, making cities unlivable.  So, there really is no right answer, I cant even tell if there is a happy median.  I guess at this point in time, from where I'm sitting, all I can do is wait and watch how the world decides to destroy itself.