Today “Earth friendly” mindset is natural and common, but it wasn’t always like this in the past. During Soviet Union times human mentality was quite different. No one thought that human beings are strong enough to influence Earth globally and ideology was to “conquer nature”. We were trying to prove that we are more powerful than nature and that we can control it — build dams and channels, cut forests and plow land.
One of good examples of those times is Aral Sea — destroyed by irrigation channels for the sake of growing cotton. Below is the animation based on images taken by Envisat in 2006 — 2009 years. Just 3 years, it’s lighting fast on the Earth scale!
Aral Sea shrinkage from 2006 to 2009. Click to view the very big version of it. Credit: Envisat, ESA.
It’s only later we realized that Earth is rather volunerable and started to build eco friendly mindsets in schools, so the new generation should be smarter and learn on the past errors. It did help to grow cotton though :-)
Abandoned ship on former sea. Click for bigger version. Image from: Wikipedia.
Tags: aral sea, cotton, Earth, environment, environment disaster, envisat
Astronomy Articles, News and Pictures 
July 15, 2009 at 9:21 am |
The Aral Sea used to cover all of that whitish area, if I recall correctly.
The salt dusts and pesticide residues in the sea bed cause serious health issues for the poor people who still have to somehow live in the otherwise worthless houses.