Tom Reed of the Biomass Energy Foundation likes this book so much he wants to give it away free to everybody involved in bioenergy. Good idea! Anyway, no need to give it away, it's online.
Conquest of the Land Through 7,000 Years By W.C. Lowdermilk. 1953. USDA Agriculture Information Bulletin No. 99. 30 p. http://soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010119lowdermilk.usda/cls.html http://www.nhq.nrcs.usda.gov/BCS/agecol/conquest.pdf [PDF] Lowdermilk was the Assistant Chief of the Soil Conservation Service. This classic bulletin provides an historical account of civilization and agriculture, and particularly, the destruction of fertile lands through agricultural practices that result in soil erosion, gulleys, deforestation, deserts, and wastelands. This is his famed "Eleventh Commandment", first delivered in a talk on soil conservation in Jerusalem in June 1939: "Thou shalt inherit the Holy Earth as a faithful steward, conserving its resources and productivity from generation to generation. "Thou shalt safeguard thy fields from soil erosion, thy living waters from drying up, thy forests from desolation, and protect thy hills from overgrazing by thy herds, that thy descendants may have abundance forever. "If any shall fail in this stewardship of the land thy fruitful fields shall become sterile stony ground and wasting gullies, and thy descendants shall decrease and live in poverty or perish from off the face of the earth." To which one might add this: Prayer Let the rains come down upon the earth in time let the earth bend down graciously with the produce of the land, let the country be without scourge; let the learned be fearless. Let the sonless have sons, let those who have sons have grandsons, let the poor become rich, let all my people live for a hundred autumns. O Lord, let all my people be happy and fulfilled. (from the Sanskrit) Where today do we find rulers with such prayers? Sure, "democracy is the worst possible system, except for all the others", but why should we vote for any would-be leader who doesn't qualify on the above grounds? How many of the elected governments really have a majority mandate? Increasingly large numbers of people in many (most?) of the western democracies don't vote. Is it really because they don't care/are too dumb/too complacent? Maybe if you could vote "against", many more would vote. Maybe one in a million elected officials would support such a change. Maybe the other 999,999 should be fired. Keith Addison Journey to Forever Handmade Projects Tokyo http://journeytoforever.org/ Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Please do NOT send "unsubscribe" messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
