DIRT

I really liked this article, even though it was a little long. I love dirt. I love gardening with my hands, that's why I never wear gloves even if it is a pain to wash my hands later. I found it interesting that people care so much about the dirt under our feet. I love the idea that without dirt we wouldn't be able to survive because all the water would run off into the ocean. That's such an amazing idea, that without dirt we wouldn't survive. Another amazing idea is that dirt is a living organ, almost like the skin of the planet. Something I didn't know before is that healthy soil is one half air. One tablespoon has more life within than all the humans on earth. That's ridiculous but amazing. I love the feel of rich soil and the smell is amazing,I also love that it houses so many creatures. Its so fun to see the earth worms come out in the rain even if its sad that so many get stepped on. I knew that trees stored carbon but I did not know that the dirt also stored carbon. Dirt is so important to our way of life that when we overwork it our civilizations fail. That's some pretty heavy stuff. It asks the question, what will we do when we have no good soil left? Soil erosion is a big problem, we are causing about 80% of erosion and it takes at least 200 years for it to come back. Our top layer of soil is being wiped away, and this is our most important layer. This erosion is also causing water pollution, because pesticides get into the water. We are causing this erosion when we build houses, urban erosion is not watched by any federal system, people are getting away with this. Because farms are now specializing on only one product the soil is now becoming infertile. Or use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers is not helping matters either.I liked this article though it was a little lengthy and I'm not sure that I liked their solutions to these problems, "urbanization needs to be better managed,...poverty,war and desperation need to be addressed". I thought they were all to vague and unlikely to happen anytime soon. The only concrete thing that I picked up was to buy organic, I felt that they could have come up with far better solutions.