How fences could save the planet

Mark Stevenson in the New Statesman:

Nobody would blame you for being pessimistic about the future. After all, if you listen to the media (and, it seems, anybody over 25) we're all going to hell in the proverbial handcart, as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – economic meltdown, climate change, terrorism and, who else, Simon Cowell – bear down on us.

But I have news. Some people are rather fed up of this narrative and are quietly getting on with solving the grand challenges our planet faces, using both new technologies and forgotten wisdom. Their mantra? “Cheer up, it might just happen.” I've spent the past 18 months researching a book about these people.

One of them is Tony Lovell, an accountant from Australia, where farming has become synonymous with drought. A decade of low rainfall, heatwaves and wildfires has scorched much of the land. Australians call it “the Big Dry” and it means that when the rains come – as they are doing now on the eastern seaboard – water runs over the parched surface, resulting in devastating floods. Many farms survive on “drought assistance” handed out by the government. Rural suicide is depressingly common.

Lovell thinks he has the answer. At a climate-change conference in Manchester, I find him talking about a new method of farming. “This is a typical ranch in Mexico,” he explains, showing an image of a terracotta dust bowl with bare, compacted soil. Then he puts up a second image of lush green vegetation. “This is the ranch next door. Same soil, same rainfall. These pictures were taken on the same day.”

More here.