When I was a child in the 1950s, the Aral Sea was the world´s fourth largest fresh water lake.  Now it is a desert in all but name.

Over the decades, Soviet authorities diverted rivers that flowed into the sea to irrigate cotton and other crops. The world’s fourth-largest inland body of water — which covered an area about 15 percent larger than Lake Michigan — gradually shrank, triggering a domino effect of ecological, economic and community collapse, the kind of catastrophe that could befall other environmentally fragile parts of the world unless we change our ways.

See the story here.

Sincerely,

Ed

A Giant Inland Sea Is Now a Desert, and a Warning for Humanity

Opinion | A Giant Inland Sea Is Now a Desert, and a Warning for Humanity

Opinion | A Giant Inland Sea Is Now a Desert, and a Warning for HumanityThe Aral Sea’s demise matters to us all.