#221: Soil

The list of things that enable life on earth is a pretty short one: a dollop of sunshine, drizzle of water, and a soupçon of air. But for anything fun to happen on land, you're going to need a liberal smattering of soil, too. In fact that 30cm of topsoil is so fundamentally important that it gets a bit scary to think what would happen if it wasn't there. Unfortunately that's less of a thought experiment than it might sound - it's widely quoted that humanity has got only 60 years of decent harvests left before the soil is either so degraded or so not there that we won't be able to feed ourselves. Eek. So, we DIG into the issue, dish the DIRT on some dodgy statmongering, and wonder what on EARTH it all means. Aaaaaand talking of Earth, we also give short shrift to gazillionaire bell-end Bezos and his willy wanging wocket whooshing. * As mentioned in the pod, Our World In Data's in-depth piece re the '60 harvests left' stat is here https://ourworldindata.org/soil-lifespans Sustainababble is your friendly environment podcast, out weekly. Theme music by the legendary Dicky Moore – @dickymoo. Sustainababble logo by the splendid Arthur Stovell at Design by Mondial. Ecoguff read out by Arabella. Love the babble? Bung us a few pennies at www.patreon.com/sustainababble. MERCH: sustainababble.teemill.com Available on iTunes, Spotify, Acast & all those types of things, or at sustainababble.fish. Visit us at @thebabblewagon and at Facebook.com/sustainababble. Email us at [email protected].