A sahara desert’s worth of milk powder
I just got sent this video of a Sanlu advertising campaign:
Sanlu’s September 2008 TV commercial for Western media, with the copy “For the past 15 years we have enough sale volume covered the entire sahara desert”. The ‘volume’ refers to milk powder.
Meanwhile Sue Kedgley has been asking some pertinent questions:
While we welcome the fact that the Prime Minister contacted Chinese authorities, as we believe Fonterra should have done a month earlier, we cannot understand why the Government did not act immediately when its embassy was informed on August 14.
The Green Party calls on the Government to explain why its embassy sat on the information for 17 days before informing authorities in New Zealand, and then why the Government failed to act for a further eight days before it informed Chinese officials. What happened between August 14 and September 8?
September 22nd, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Interesting that Sanlu advertising refers to the Sahara desert, rather than something somewhat more indigenous to China, the Gobi desert.
But maybe that would be a bit too close to home, given that the Gobi desert is expanding at an alarmingly rapid rate, particularly on its southern edge into China, where an average of 3,600 km2 of grassland is overtaken annually by the Gobi Desert.
This loss of farmland has caused an estimated $50 billion in losses each year for China’s economy.
September 22nd, 2008 at 8:48 pm
What’s a reasonable timeframe then, Frog?
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:14 am
When human lives are in danger I think people would be prepared to act with haste?
Labour’s action on climate change would back up the defer defer hypothesis though!
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:58 pm
toad Says:
September 22nd, 2008 at 5:08 pm
> But maybe that would be a bit too close to home, given that the Gobi desert is expanding at an alarmingly rapid rate, particularly on its southern edge into China, where an average of 3,600 km2 of grassland is overtaken annually by the Gobi Desert.
true. but, credit where credit’s due, the Chinese government is working on solving this problem. They are planting a long thin forest to block the path of the expanding desert. The idea is that, by the time the sand gets to the forest, the trees will be big enough not to be killed off by the sand, and the desertification will not be able to spread into the forest. Apparently, ecologists are confident that this will succeed in stopping the desert if they follow through with it. And who else has ever successfully blocked the expansion of a desert.
September 24th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Yes, they are trying to do something about it kahikatea, and after several failed attempts over the last couple of decades, they may be finally having some limited success.
But we must not forget what causes this in the first place - deforestation, over-farming, excessive irrigation, global climate change. And China’s massive programme of building coal-fired power stations is likely to exacerbate the problem.
If it isn’t stopped, the Gobi is likely to be overtaking outlying suburbs of Beijing in 50 years!