Toward a philosophy of the seas Book

Edit: David Montgomery's Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations is essentially an update of this book. It includes all of the important points from Topsoil, leaves out many of its redundancies, and goes on to explore hundreds of pages of great expansions of the thesis. Topsoil was great, but I would say that anyone interested in its content would be best served by jumping straight to Montgomery's superior text. /Edit

I figured out something about the relationship between the geographical procession of civilization and agriculture sometime last year, at least - it may have been mentioned in Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee? But I never really heard more on the subject, and so I was excited to discover, through a reference in Schumacher's Small is Beautiful, this book. It is an exposition of just that concept: progressive civilization has migrated over time because civilization as it has been practiced always degrades the land it depends on.

"Civilized man has marched across the face of the earth and left a desert in his footprints."

Soil erosion is the hidden environmental problem and the unsung historical factor responsible for the fall of essentially all of the great civilizations of the past. Dale and Carter, and their curious foreign correspondent, Walter Lowdermilk, take the reader on a brief walk through thousands of years of history in the Nile Valley, Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean, Western Europe, and the US. In each case, we see different iterations of the same trend: ill-management of the land leaves a formerly fertile area impoverished, often nearly desertified. Erosion and siltation are the two main problems, and they often go hand in hand. Erosion takes away topsoil, which provides organic material, nutrients, and soaks up rainfall effectively. Siltation clogs up reservoirs and irrigation works and creates swamps that breed malaria. Both are caused by agriculture, though they take different forms in each climatic situation, and respond differently to human input changes. In short, every single major center of civilization except the Nile valley has become a despoiled desert.

Western Europe is the only civilization cited that apparently developed appropriate soil conservation practices. However, these practices were abandoned somewhat during the 20th century, and Europe's fate is up in the air. In the US, modern technology has allowed to to perpetrate some of the most rapid and egregious damage in the history of civilization. Carter and Dale point out that, since we know have Science, it is within our means to become the first perpetual civilization. However, in a refreshing change from most books on subjects like this, the authors are "inclined to think the odds favor a repetition of history, that the cycles of nature are irresistible, and that the systematic deterioration of the environment is almost inevitable. Man may have the technology to save himself, but does he have the character and the will to apply it?"

The authors give a good explanation of why this is the case: Individual development projects are assessed with cost-benefit analysis that compares the environmental harm to the economic good. However, environmental harm is a generally permanent thing, and so its costs are underestimated. As development continues, resources are exhausted and become more valuable. Environmental damage becomes concurrently more risky, but "as population increases, the need and the benefits [of exploiting the resource] will tend to become more important to the society as time passes. The losses and damage to the environment become less significant and in the evolving expediency, or in a fear psychology, the project will very likely be approved - sooner or later."

Interestingly, the authors spend quite a while saying that, if the efforts of the Soil Conservation Service (an innovative program started after the Erosion Emergencies of the dustbowl) aren't followed through within the next 25 years, then American civilization will have missed its chance and will certainly be meeting the fate of Rome and Easter Island. The revised edition of the book was written in 1974, and the changes Carter claims needed to have happened have been neglected. American civilization is apparently doomed. :(

The book never gave any kind of explanation or overview of soil science or agriculture's specific effects, and only briefly listed modern and traditional conservation techniques. That's probably alright, since most of it seems pretty straightforward, but it might have been worthwhile?