| Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Friday August 20, 2004 - The Guardian Dust storms emanating from the Sahara have increased tenfold in 50 years, contributing to climate change as well as threatening human health and destroying coral reefs thousands of miles away. And one major cause is the replacement of the camel by four-wheel drive vehicles as the desert vehicle of choice. Andrew Goudie, professor of geography at Oxford University, blames the process of Toyotarisation - a coinage reflecting the near-ubiquitous desert use of Toyota Land Cruisers - for destroying a thin crust of lichen and stones that has protected vast areas of the Sahara from the wind for centuries. Four-wheel drive use, along with overgrazing and deforestation, were the major causes of the world's growing dust storm problem, the scale of which was much bigger than previously realised, Prof Goudie, master of St Cross College, told the International Geographical Congress in Glasgow yesterday. "I am quite serious, you should look at deserts from the air, scarred all over by wheel tracks, people driving indiscriminately over the surface breaking it up. Toyotarisation is a major cause of dust storms. If I had my way I would ban them from driving off-road." The problem has become so serious that an estimated 2-3bn tonnes of dust is carried away on the wind each year. Storms in the Sahara transport dust high into the atmosphere and deposit it as far away as Greenland and the US.... |
I'm still trying to figure out a way to blame this on Bush, but it's looking like we're all responsible for this one.
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