'Toyota-isation' is latest global threat as desert dust storms spread

[Scro]

There is an environmental problem that is just beginning to be recognised as being of global significance: "Toyota-isation".

The surfaces of deserts are being broken up by four-wheel drive vehicles such as the Toyota Land Cruiser, the Japanese version of the Land Rover and a great favourite with drivers in the Sahel, the dry states to the south of the Sahara, as well as many other challenging places.

The surface disturbance is proceeding at such a rate in Africa, the Middle East and Asia that it is contributing substantially to a rise in dust storms, and to an increase in dust in the global atmosphere generally, which could have serious climatic and health repercussions. Andrew Goudie, the professor of geography at Oxford University, told the International Geographical Congress in Glasgow that annual dust production in some parts of north Africa had increased ten-fold in the past 50 years, and that across the Sahel, from the Sudan to the Gulf of Guinea, it had increased six-fold since the 1960s.

Global dust emissions were between two and three billion tons a year, and this was even being felt in Britain, Professor Goudie said, with an increase in episodes of "blood rain" - the deposition of dust from the Sahara on the British land mass. "The world is getting a lot dustier," he said. The reasons included land use changes caused by growing populations, such as deforestation and overgrazing, but Toyota-isation, a word coined by him to mean disturbance by 4x4s, was a specific cause, the professor said.


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=553288

[brokensymmetry]

1. Interesting!

And welcome to DU! :hi:

[enough]

2. Amazing how fragile things can be when disturbed.

snip>

If you take almost any desert now, people go all over it in four-wheel drives," he said. "The number of four-wheel drives in the south-west US and indeed in the Middle East is staggering.

"The desert surfaces have been stable for thousands of years because they usually have a thin layer of lichen or algae, or gravel from which the fine sand has blown away. Once these surfaces are breached you get down to the fine sand again, which can be picked up by the wind."

snip>

[slappypan]

3. ATVs

They are really pushing ATVs as the big new recreational craze, and it's amazing how destructive they can be. Turning whole areas of forest into muddy, gritty moonscapes of treadmarks.

[Dover]

4. Interesting. Not sure why Toyota is being singled out...but all 4WD

offroad capable vehicles INVITE this sort of destruction, and it's not just in desert regions. If someone has this capability, of course they will use it. Perhaps these questions of the effect any product has on the environment ought to be part of the equation before okaying their manufacture, just as engineers/manufacturers ought to think ahead about how their products will be disposed of in landfills, etc....more holistic planning of a product's life from inception to trash heap.

If they intend to make them available to everyone, then they will have to have more regulation about just where they can go. Perhaps areas need to be put aside for JUST this sport. I don't know what the answer is, as I don't think many who drive offroad or across deserts for sport are the types that would heed such warnings or consider their effect on the environment. So how do you educate them?

[Scro]

5. Because Toyota is by far the most popular 4WD in these regions

[truthspeaker]

6. Yep. "Japanese version of the Land Rover" my ass

A Land Cruiser is what you drive into the desert/mountains/jungle to tow out your Land Rover when it breaks down.

Click & Clack once referred to the Toyota Land Cruiser as "the official vehicle of sub-Saharan Africa".