Prepare for Change

  http://iranarze.ir/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/E3679.pdf "Since 2013, we have been conducting an outdoor planting experiment  at  two  sites  (with  areas  of  approximately  550 m2  and  420m2,  respectively)  in  the  Nan’an  District  of  Chongqing,  China.  Desert landform conditions were simulated in the experiment by establishing  a  15-cm-  to  25-cm-thick  plain  sand  layer  underlain  by  a  20-cm-  to  30-cm-thick  gravel  layer  on  the  ground.  Afterward,  three  types  of  “soilized”  sand  layers  with  thicknesses  of  10–20 cm, which were obtained by mixing sand with a modified sodium  carboxymethyl  cellulose  (CMC)  solution  (containing  2%  modified  CMC  and  5%  com...

https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2017/0919/UN-solution-for-a-pollution-free-planet-polluters-should-pick-up-the-bill "Highlighting the dramatic progress made by China and India, Erik Solheim, executive director of UN Environment, urged governments to take a joined-up approach to going green. 'The profit of destroying nature or polluting the planet is nearly always privatized, while the costs of polluting the planet or the cost of destroying ecosystems is nearly always socialized,' he told an international conference on sustainable development at New York's Columbia University on Monday. 'That cannot continue,' he said. 'Anyone who pollutes, anyone who destroys nature must pay the cost for that destruction or that pollution.'” Makes perfect sense to me.  The Commons must be protected for all.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/ " Seen from the air, the Netherlands resembles no other major food producer—a fragmented patchwork of intensely cultivated fields, most of them tiny by agribusiness standards, punctuated by bustling cities and suburbs. In the country’s principal farming regions, there’s almost no potato patch, no greenhouse, no hog barn that’s out of sight of skyscrapers, manufacturing plants, or urban sprawl. More than half the nation’s land area is used for agriculture and horticulture. Banks of what appear to be gargantuan mirrors stretch across the countryside, glinting when the sun shines and glowing with eerie interior light when night falls. They are Holland’s extraordinary greenhouse complexes, some of them covering 175 acres. These climate-controlled farms enable a country located a scant thousand miles from the Arctic Circle to be a global leader in exports of a fair-weather fr...