Plunderers of the Earth: The Erosion of Civilization, the Mad Crusade to Control the Climate, and the Untold Stories of Soil and CO2
By Julius Ruechel
Independently published
It took the better part of a #2 pencil, along with a sheet of stickers, to flag the many constructs of stark wisdom in this book, which includes meticulous graphs, photographs and citations. While only partway through the book, I contacted WAPF about doing a review.
Years ago, my life journey included being “taken” by Al Gore’s book. (Please don’t cancel me!) Then, doubts kept surfacing. Dr. Tom Cowan encourages us to learn through what we see and feel versus from experts. Through WAPF, I found Allan Savory’s information on desertification, which gave me the type of “tangible” information that Cowan is talking about. Desertification is something I can see and feel here in the Midwest.
Soil health books galore have mesmerized me, but Ruechel’s book, published in 2024, has topped them all in information-rich nuggets. The author has my deep gratitude for exorcising any traces of “climate narrative” still wasting space in my head. Email discussion with the author indicates that he has been a Weston A. Price Foundation follower for years.
Ruechel posits that, yes, the fact that carbon dioxide (CO2) is increasing should be a concern to us—but not for the reasons portrayed by the “climate experts” and the media. It is not rising because of cow farts. (Livestock numbers are at an all-time low.) It is not high from fossil fuel use or even from the travel that you have been made to feel guilty about. Carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere when carbon is released from volcanoes, oceans, biomass decaying or oxidizing and from mismanaged soil. The soil itself, tilled with a diesel tractor, emits far more carbon from being tilled than the tractor emits while doing the tilling!
The book is written in a “whodunit” format that kept me turning all six hundred eighty-three pages! This one is so rich in solid factual evidence—information that I will refer back to in the future—that I am unwilling to loan it out. After underlining and flagging, I wrote twelve pages of notes for easier referencing. (I will gladly share those notes with those of you who read the book.) I wish it were a required textbook for high school.
Just recently, Earth.com had a headline about CO2 being at a higher level now than it has been in eight hundred thousand years! OK. They got my attention. Maybe it is. But does that mean it is dangerously high? Carbon dioxide is plant food, so how much CO2 is too much for plants? Ruechel provides evidence that about 1300 ppm is ideal for plants. How high is CO2 in our atmosphere now? Less than 500 ppm. How much CO2 would be enough to wipe humans off the earth? About 4000 ppm, according to Ruechel.
As an “apolitical” reader of this book, Ruechel nonetheless prompted a direct foray into the politics of dirt. Politics is dirty, but politics, property rights and prosperity are all mired in soil mismanagement. It sounds too simple, but the truth is simple. It all starts with the denigration of the soil. The solution is not to mar our landscape with wind turbines or any of the other bloated, bureaucratic boondoggles wasting fiscal resources and furthering plunder. We need to care for our soil.
Ruechel concludes with three case studies on soil management and economic and political mayhem: the unraveling of the Sahel, Australia on fire, and Haiti’s long descent into hell. All three arrows clearly point to soil denigration as the underlying culprit. Ruechel chillingly concludes with discussion of the “Water Wars” strangling the livestock industry in British Columbia. Definitely two thumbs up!
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