DP Photo Challenge: Earth

/ Su Leslie
Stripping the earth. Earth-moving equipment sits by mound of scraped topsoil. Site of new housing development, Hobsonville Point, Auckland, NZ. Image: Su Leslie, 2017

Stripping the earth. Site of new housing development, Hobsonville Point, Auckland, NZ. Image: Su Leslie, 2017

I guess I am being somewhat literal in my interpretation of this week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge.

All around my city, topsoil is scraped and carted away, trees are wrenched out and whole ecosystems are destroyed. The land is stripped of its ability to sustain life, ironically to make way for more people who rely on the Earth for sustenance.

Am I missing something here?

31 thoughts on “DP Photo Challenge: Earth”

  3. That’s an awful development you’re witnessing. Especially in such a beautiful country like yours. It’s must feel like watching the earth bleed to death… and I’m the end that’s our destiny as well if we carry on like “normal”… 😦

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  6. We are definitely using more resources than we can replenish. Something has to give at some point, and given all our reliance on electricity to power all the techno gadgets you have to wonder how soon it will be that we will be rationing electricity.

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  7. Unfortunately, this has been going on in one form or another forever. Without development, we’d have no cities, no suburbs, and no place to live, work, or shop. It makes me sad also when I see trees cleared out, but as long as the population keeps growing, where are people supposed to live? It’s a paradox, as you describe it, but what is the solution?

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    • Part of the problem here is that while household unit size is declining, actual house size is increasing. Whereas my parents raised three kids in a 3-bedroom house with one bathroom, now it’s normal to build 4-5 bedroom houses, with multiple living spaces and bathrooms. These cost more to build and maintain and have a much larger footprint, leaving less area for gardens, trees, etc. It means fewer people per square metre, which spreads us out more and requires more roads, more shopping malls, etc. We build houses with high-end kitchens, but every new shopping block seems to be about 80 percent fast-food places. People spend hours commuting through traffic to jobs that they do to pay for the expensive house they don’t get to spend any time in.
      I think a good place to start would be do downsize and simplify homes so that we can fit more people comfortably in less space.

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      • Yes, same thing is happening in many places here. I had to share a bedroom with a sibling growing up; today that is unheard of. We had no “family room” (just a living room) when our kids were growing up; now everyone needs a family room and a media room and a living room! But I live in a town with mostly older homes and very little open land, so people tend to live in more reasonable spaces. We live in an 0ver 55 that is new development, but our house is not oversized by today’s standards. But your points are valid and apply to the US as well, unfortunately.

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        • There is a backlash I think. My son and his friends are pessimistic about ever being able to own a house and many are thinking about small-scale living. My son has shed (or at least stored with us) most of his possessions and seems determined to live as simply as possible.

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          • People here do seem to be building tiny houses; I saw a “show home” tiny house recently at a eco-fair. There is a lot of publicity around it at the moment, probably because it dovetails nicely with one of the mainstream media’s principal narratives — how unaffordable housing has become, especially for the young. It will be interesting to see what happens in coming years. I must admit, I could quite happily have a small dwelling area within a big shed where I can work. Most of the space I need is for cooking and making stuff, and for storing art materials.

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          • We live in a 500 square feet cottage all summer, and I have often said that’s all I need—a bedroom, a bathroom, a space for eating and cooking, and a space for “living.” Much easier to clean, maintain, and enjoy.

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  8. OK, now I know where that off-topic reply you had on the next post came from. 🙂 I wonder about areas in the US such as Phoenix, where water is already at a premium and being taken from the Colorado River. Every building requires water and every person as well. If we were taking care of our water, that would be a different matter, but…

    janet

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