Energy crisis, water crisis, climate crisis, soil crisis

My generation grew up with the notion that energy is the most limiting resource on which humanity depends. Perhaps the most captivating board game we played as children was “Öl für uns alle” in which we drilled oil wells, build oil pipelines, bought oil tankers, sold crude oil to refineries, feared fires in our oil facilities, and despaired about exploding transport costs when the Suez canal was closed because of a war in the Near East. What the game did not explain is that the oil was the very reason for many wars, particularly in that part of the world. Later we were taught that the wars of the future will be fought about water instead of about oil. And certainly, fossil fresh ground water is becoming a rare and precious resource. Today’s young generation takes to the streets to fight - or rather, and better, to argue - for global politics to stop what our generation euphemistically calls climate change, and what they rightly call climate catastrophe. May be we should call it climate crisis, because a crisis is an opportunity, a wake-up-call before - hopefully before - it is too late to act. But have you ever thought about a soil crisis? You may have heard that sand - though proverbially abundant “wie Sand am Meer” - is becoming a rare and precious commodity. But soil? Yes, a soil crisis is looming on the horizon. The IPBES biodiversity report is mentioning it: The quality of the soil on one quarter of our arable land is declining. Is energy limiting? Not really, the sun delivers about 10.000 times more energy than humanity requires. Is water limiting? Not really, the oceans contain about 300.000 times more water than humanity needs annually - desalting it would ‘only’ about double the global energy demand, and energy is not the problem. Is soil limiting? It sure is. Less than 3% of the Earth’s surface is arable land, with biologically active topsoil only 10-30 cm thick. An estimated 35 billion tons of fertile soil are lost to erosion annually. And it takes an estimated 2000 (!) years to produce about 10 cm of soil. In other words: soil is an all but non-renewable resource. About 25% of the land areas has seen a reduction in productivity due to land degradation in the past decades, IPBES says. About 20% of arable land on Earth, and about 50% of irrigated land, has become unfit for agriculture because of salt accumulation in the soil. As a consequence, arable land per person is expected to globally decline by 50% from 2012 to 2050. But 90% of our food, feed, fibre, and fuel depend on intact soil. Protect our soils!