World turning to dust??

One third of the earth Uninhabitable

Published on June 16, 2004 By Phoenixboi In Current Events

The world is turning to dust, with increasingly vast areas becoming desert wastelands every year and threatening to send millions of people fleeing to greener countries, the United Nations says.

In Australia, irrigation systems are pumping up salty water and slowly poisoning some farms, just one of many problems the world body has highlighted.

One-third of the earth's surface is now at risk, it says, driving people into cities and destroying agriculture in vast swaths of Africa. Thirty-one per cent of Spain is at risk of becoming a desert, while China has lost 92,100 square kilometres - an area the size of Portugal - since the 1950s.

This week, the United Nations marks the 10th anniversary of the Convention to Combat Desertification, a plan aimed at stopping the phenomenon. But instead, the transformation into desert seems to be picking up speed - doubling its pace since the 1970s.

"It's a creeping catastrophe," said Michel Smitall, a spokesman for the UN secretariat that oversees the 1994 accord. "Entire parts of the world might become uninhabitable."

Link

Humanity is in for a rough ride. Its going to be interesting folks. Are you ready for the ride???

Comments

Phoenixboi

on Jun 16, 2004

So is global warming to account for this as well or is overpopulation more to blame? Do we tend to blame everything that happens to the planet on global warming? And if the Kyoto Protocol was to be ratyfied would that solve the problem? Are there other issues here we arent seeing? What more can we as a human race do to save this planet thats not going to displace us, take away jobs, and at the same time save whats left on the planet thats keeping it alive?

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