Man vs. Mother Nature

Man vs. Mother Nature

Nature disasters are caused by man. Using this premise man can prevent natural disasters. Up to now, the main thrust has been to try to conquer Mother Nature. This has been disastrous since Mother Nature, at the most, will be controlled only for a short period of time.

The solution is to work with and around Mother Nature is keeping natural events from destroying life, food and shelter. Flood victims. In simple terms, people do not live in the flood plains and the plains are designated for uses that are not devastated by floods. Floods often caused by man are more devastating than normal. For instance in Bangladesh, a third of the people is homeless due, in large part, to the deforestation and development of land in the watershed.

The effects of earthquakes and hurricanes can be reduced through shelters which can withstand the pressures of these natural events. Food storage, different agriculture practices and cooperation can reduce or eliminate famine; the key is to live with nature instead of trying to conquer it. The U.S has been the prime example of spending enormous energy in trying to control nature events and having some of the biggest disasters in recent times. The corp. of engineers, the arm which build flood control dams, had a high level meeting recently of discuss why on the largest flood is history had hit the Mississippi river even after billions of dollars and thousands of dams and channels had been guild upstream. The conclusion was the same as that the environmentalists had been preaching for years. When you encourage speedier runoff and permit less water to soak in, larger floods will occur. If you consider only the surfaces of the highways which prohibit any absorption and which speeds the after to the creeks, you can see that this factor alone can cause tremendous flood. Pavement alone covers the equivalent of several states although we neglect to set his real size due to it being stretched out.

Roof tops consist of another lager factor in the increase in floods. Earth sheltered and thatched roofs or individual catchment will reduce the runoff and have side benefits of providing more land and water crops. Retarding the runoff by using vegetation and other means will replenish underground water tables; drought is currently killing many people in Africa. Over graining and bad agriculture practices ate the main reasons. It seems that man should learn from these experiences, but doesn’t. the northern part of the Sahara desert was the bread basket of the roman impair.(during the same period, hills of Nepal were cultivated as many are today )

Desertification is a major world concern since man’s destructing of the environment has been so rapid in the last few years. Water catchments, tall grasses with very deep roots, and the absorber of man and domestic animals will gradually return the desert to productive use. It takes longer to grow a tree than it does to cut one down.

Country will which follows the large scale agricultural practices of the west is asking for trouble. Tractor encourage large farms which cause more erosion, dependency on fertilizer, insecticides and herbicides if you have one farmer instead of twenty growing one crop on equivalent pieces of land, a disaster could occur if the one man fails but the likelihood of all twenty small farmers failing at the same time is remote, especially if they are growing different types of crops. Diversity is perpectuality, concentration has a definite end.

In Nepal, the large scale, western type of farms of the Tarai will gradually convert the terraces in and outside of Kathmandu valley of grassland, following the paths of small farms in the U.S. the current maintenance of the paddies reduces erosion of the steep hills because rain falls mainly on the flat surface of the paddy where it is held long enough for the same to soak in and for soil to settle out. The vertical sections don’t receive the direct impact of the rains. Can the west learn from the east?