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Pave the world
If everyone on the planet had a car, would we all get a parking spot? According to GRIST MAGAZINE, our appetite for cars, and roads to drive them on, is eating up cropland at an alarming rate. Although this may not be news in the United States, home to 214 million automobiles and 51.9 million acres of pavement, loss of cropland is becoming a serious problem in the developing world.
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2/24 – Tuning out Channel One An increasing number of cars in China and India, where cropland is already under pressure from industrialization, could affect food security worldwide. The article offers up several “what-ifs,” including: what if China becomes as car-centric as Japan? (The answer: it loses over half of its rice-producing cropland.)
While paving in countries like the United States and Great Britain is slowing due to “automobile saturation,” developing countries have a chance to design transportation systems that don’t depend on cars.
