In Cows Save the Planet, journalist Judith D. Schwartz looks at soil as a crucible for our many overlapping environmental, economic, and social crises.

Schwartz reveals that for many of these problems -- climate change, desertification, biodiversity loss, droughts, floods, wildfires, rural poverty, malnutrition, and obesity -- there are positive, alternative scenarios to the degradation and devastation we face. In each case, our ability to turn these crises into opportunities depends on how we treat the soil.

Drawing on the work of thinkers and doers, renegade scientists and institutional whistleblowers from around the world, Schwartz challenges much of the conventional thinking about global warming and other problems. For example, land can suffer from undergrazing as well as overgrazing, since certain landscapes, such as grasslands, require the disturbance from livestock to thrive. Regarding climate, when we focus on carbon dioxide, we neglect the central role of water in soil -- "green water" -- in temperature regulation. And much of the carbon dioxide that burdens the atmosphere is not the result of fuel emissions, but from agriculture; returning carbon to the soil not only reduces carbon dioxide levels but also enhances soil fertility.

Cows Save the Planet is at once a primer on soil's pivotal role in our ecology and economy, a call to action, and an antidote to the despair that environmental news so often leaves us with.

• We started tracking this book on May 15, 2014.
• This book was $10.49 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 73 times in the past 3,633 days.
• The current price of this book is $12.99 last checked one day ago.
• This book is at its lowest price in the past six months.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is $12.80.
• The lowest price to date was $7.59 last reached on January 26, 2020.
• This book has been $7.59 one time since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $13.49 last reached on September 25, 2023.
• This book has been $13.49 13 times since we started tracking it.

• Science & MathAgricultural SciencesSoil Science
• Science & MathAgricultural SciencesSustainable Agriculture
• Science & Math

• Publication Date: May 20, 2013
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 243 Pages
• File Size: 3,187 KB