Kat Gale’s Reviews > Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth > Status Update

"We have one question for the political leaders of the world. If you can find not millions, not billions, but trillions of dollars to bail out the banks, the bankers, and their bonuses, how is it that you cannot find the money to bail out the planet, the poor, and our children?"

"A calculation by the Rodale Institute, a nonprofit group in New York State, found that if no-till was used on all 3.5 billion acres of the earth's tillable land, it would sequester half of humanity's annual greenhouse gas emissions."

"The main obstacle to ecological farming is that it takes three to five years to make the transition from the conventional way of doing things. Most farmers don't want to wait that long. They can't. They are already on the edge of survival."

"China's farmers have centuries of experience with organic
fertilizer," I said. "Why are they using so many chemicals now?"
"The government subsidizes it," Jiang replied. "And farmers have used chemical fertilizers so long that the soil fertility has declined. So now the soil needs even more fertilizer to maintain yields. Adding more fertilizer reduces soil fertility even more, so it's a vicious circle."

"As Darwin said, the species that survives is not the one that is strongest or the most intelligent—it is the one that is the most adaptable. As climate change intensifies, it will become increasingly clear to business leaders that both mitigation and adaptation are not options but necessities. The question is how many of them will come to this realization in time."

"biodynamic farming goes a big step beyond organic farming. Compost replaces fertilizer; ground cover and mulch substitute for irrigation; in some cases, planting and other key activities are timed to the cycles of the moon."

"climate change is like the Internet. It suddenly appears one day, it changes everything, it gets bigger every year, and you have to learn how to make money from it or you're going to get eaten for lunch."

"Making it fun is one of the ways we'll get the public involved in the
climate plan. The message can't be gloom and doom. That
turns people off. But if you tell them how they can help and maybe even make money in the process, they're eager to get started."