The Ailing Planet: the Green Movement's Role
Systems under strain
Describe how the earth's biological systems are being depleted.
The environmental thinker Lester Brown names four principal biological systems that feed us and supply raw materials for industry: fisheries, forests, grasslands and croplands.
When people demand more from these systems than they can give, they break down: fisheries collapse, forests disappear, grasslands turn into barren wasteland, and croplands decline.
In many poor countries, forests are cut down for cooking fuel. Firewood has become so scarce and costly that it can cost more than the food cooked over it.
Tropical forests are especially precious: they are the factories of life, where evolution works. Yet they are being destroyed at a rate of 40 to 50 million acres a year, about an acre and a half every second.
Article 48A of India's Constitution asks the State to protect and improve the environment, and to safeguard forests and wildlife. Even so, India was losing its forests at the rate of 3.7 million acres a year.
As the article puts it, forests precede mankind; deserts follow it.
Practise this lesson
Questions that get harder as you improve, a Tutor that helps without giving the answer away, and progress you can see. Free for every learner.
No account, no email address. Opens the real product.