J. R. McNeill's Case Studies From
Something New Under the Sun (2000).
Soil Pollution in Japan: Kosaka Mine, Jinzu River Valley
Surges of mining, smelting, refining, and using metals in Japan in the late nineteenth
century brought acute heavy metal pollution in the early twentieth century, particularly
through copper contamination, and the heavy metals contaminated rice paddies in
Japanese river basins, reducing rice yields, often provoking farmer protests. Farmers
who suffered surrounded the smelter of the Kosaka mine with armed forces, forcing it to
surrender. In the Jinzu River valley, hundreds of cases of a bone disease that translates
to "ouch-ouch" was a consequence of cadmium poisoning. After 1950, the Korean War
jump-started heavy-metal production and pollution, so by the 1970s Japan led the world
in zinc and cadmium production, which contaminated irrigation water that was used on
rice paddies, and cadmium in particular is easily absorbed by rice plants. Because of
this, by 1980, about 10% of Japanese rice became unsuitable for human consumption
due to soil pollution. All of this killed hundreds of Japanese and made thousands sick in
the twentieth century, making heavy-metal soil pollution more serious in Japan than
anywhere else.
New Caledonia
Modern mining can alter landscapes and lives miles around, as it did in the French
island the size of New Jersey in the southwest Pacific New Caledonia (East of
Australia). Between a quarter and a third of the known oxidized nickel in the world lied
under its mountain summits. By the 1920s mining through picks and shovels by
immigrant labor allowed New Caledonia to lead the world in nickel production, which
lasted until the 1990s. Between 1890 and 1990, half a billion tons of rock were moved to
get 100 million tons of ore and 2.5 million tons of nickel by beheading mountains and
opencast mining. Streams filled with silt and debris, making fishing and navigation
impossible. Floods and landslides destroyed lowlands, dumping gravel on farmable
lands and destroying coconut groves. Silt smothered offshore corals in one of the
world's largest lagoons. Many lost their livelihoods, homes, and lands in the first
decades of nickel mining. Smelters that were built locally filled the air with smoke and
noxious gases. After 1950, bulldozers, hydraulic shovels, and 40-ton trucks replaced
picks and shovels, and the scale of production increased 10-fold by 1960 and 100-fold
by mid-1970, driven by Japanese industrial expansion and the Cold War. Independence
struggle and political violence wracked New Caledonia in the 1980s, when the French
government began to impose environmental regulations on active mines, but the
pollution, erosion, and siltation from abandoned mines will continue for decades, if not
centuries. After 1960 and particularly after 1980, similar parallels occurred around the
great mines of this Melanesian region.
China's Loess Plateau
China's Loess Plateau represents the first pulse of soil erosion history. Home to about
40 million people, it's one of the world's most easily eroded landscapes. The soil
contains very deep deposits that blew from Mongolia over 3 million years, so it is loose
and easily dislodged. 3,000 years ago, prior to cultivation, forests coved most of the
,region, protecting the soil from intense rains. Over 2,000 years, cultivation cleared most
of the plateau, erosion increased, and the Great River turned into the Yellow River. By
the early twentieth century, soil loss reached 1.7 billion tons annually, and by 1990, 2.2
billion.
Palliser Triangle Region
The Palliser Triangle of Western Canada is a semi-dry wheat belt in the prairie
providences. It belonged to nomadic Indians and the buffalo before the Canadian
Pacific Railway went through in the 1880s, along with a few hopeful settlers. After a few
rainy years, population grew about 15-fold between 1900 and 1915. High wheat prices
around the world then inspired even more railroads, and towns, and settlers from
eastern North America and Europe. They all sought to preserve soil moisture in the
summer by leaving fields unsown, but due to wind and dry years, serious wind erosion
occurred. Droughts hit, dust storms darkened the skies, and about 15,000 square miles
were completely destroyed. Dust blew east into Ontario and then the Atlantic in the mid-
1930s. Social and economic distress matched that of the well-known Dust Bowl and
spurred the success of unorthodox politics in the form of socialist and populist
movements, causing many to flee. The sad tale of farming in the Palliser's Triangle was
one of boom, erosion, and bust.
Philippines
The Philippine Islands are for the most part steep and subject to heavy monsoon
downpours, and thus prone to erosion even without human intervention. Cash cropping
in the northernmost region of the islands encouraged forest clearance and cultivation
from about 1880, and after about 1890, American forces drove Spain from the
Philippines, and the U.S. army generated regular demand and good prices for food
crops. On remoter islands in the central Philippines, subsistence needs and
international politics, rather than the market, inspired land clearing after American
occupation favored population growth and plantation development. Peasants cleared
forests, and rains stripped the soils, eroding especially quickly after about 1920. By
1950, in many areas, there was no soil left to erode, and contour plowing and
agroforestry of the 1970s helped stem erosion. However, when timber companies
arrived mainly after 1960, erosion sped to the point where around 1990 the World Bank
considered it the most acute environmental problem in the country.
Rwanda
Rwanda is a zone of highland terraces in east-central Africa with rich volcanic soils,
abundant rain, and a comparatively mild disease regime that supported unusually dense
rural populations in modern times. Before 1800 these slopes carried forest and minimal
human population, but gradually pioneer cultivators made their way up into the lower
hills. In the twentieth century, the migrants pushed father west and farther up due to
population pressure and politics. Belgian authorities obliged Hutu peasants to cultivate
larger areas of land and to adopt crop rotations that left soils without plant cover during
rainy seasons. Anti-erosion practices familiar to Hutu farmers were lost as the Belgians
sought to maximize food production. As peasants cleared new lands and shortened
periods of leaving lands unplowed, erosion problems mounted. Belgian officials began
to take note of rapid erosion in the 1920s and 1930s and imposed forced-labor soil
conservation schemes. Erosion in Rwanda was declared as a matter of life or death
around 1950, when the spread of the cash crop of bananas, which provide good soil
, cover, helped mitigate erosion. Nonetheless, rapid soil erosion continued in many parts
of Rwanda. Population grew after independence around 1960, allowing for sufficient
labor to attend conscientiously to soil conservation, and by the 1980s some slopes had
stabilized, but others eroded even faster. The civil war and aftermath in the mid-1990s
reduced rural population sharply, but Rwanda still has one of the highest rural
population densities in Africa.
Machakos Hills
In the Machakos Hills of Kenya, soil conservation schemes undertaken after
independence worked well. Colonial land policy had concentrated Africans on poorer
lands such as those of the semi-dry and often steep Machakos District. From at least
1930, the Machakos Hills suffered from acute erosion, causing food problems and
emigration. Between 1930 and 1990, population density tripled and cultivated areas
increased sixfold. But in the 1970s, the Kenyan soil conservation service, along with
local Akamba farmers, stemmed the tide of erosion. What made the difference was
greater security of land tenure, Kenyan authorities working closely with existing self-help
groups in Akamba society, and Swedish aid money. Plentiful labor and secure tenure
encouraged families to husband soil by leveling their plots, keeping animals away,
channeling watercourses, and other means. Intensive farming stabilized the soils of the
Machakos Hills, even as population densities grew.
London - dirty to clean
London was the world's biggest city in 1900, home to 6.6 million people, with 700,000
chimneys and a few thousand steam engines, all burning coal. London air was foulest,
based on fogs, around 1870 to 1900. One fog around 1870 caused people to blindly
walk into rivers. Several thousand people died prematurely on account of London's fogs
in this period, generally from aggravated lung conditions. Smoke abatements made
some progress and remained the focus of antipollution efforts up to 1950. The spatial
expansion in London, and more efficient industrial combustion, helped disperse and
control pollution, but coal-burning remained untouched by reformers pre-1950 due to
the hegemony of the time. However, a 6-day fog that killed 4,000 in 1952 due to chilly
weather, stagnant air, and temperature inversions that reduced visibility to zero, and
even healthy people found breathing uncomfortable, killing more Londoners in the
twentieth century than anything other than the influenza pandemic. This led to the Clean
Air Act of 1956, which sharply regulated domestic coal smoke and helped London
switch to gas and electric heat, when the smoke problem shrank to insignificance. Sulfur
emissions, although unregulated until around 1970, fell 90% thanks to this fuel shift.
Ironically, the clearer air allowed sunshine to penetrate city streets, where it reacted with
tailpipe emissions to form photochemical fog.
Pittsburgh - dirty to clean
Pittsburgh had pollution problems from coal like other American cities, and from around
1870 forward they enacted smoke abatement laws. But all remained smoky and
sulfurous until 1940. Coal took off around 1760, and steel took off around 1880, using 3
million tons or 5% of the nation's coal. Around 1890, natural gas drove down coal use
and the skies cleared, but when gas supplies ran out, smoke returned with a
vengeance. Military orders boosted production around 1940, but thanks to the example
of St. Louis, Pittsburgh enacted effective smoke prevention laws, which enacted on
industry and homes closer to 1950, despite objections from coal interests, United Mine
