These two stories have much in common. In both cases, people were living in environments that had been completely destroyed. Sudbury’s environment, at one time, was reduced to a landscape similar to the surface of the moon; the people of the Loess Plateau were living in an area so desolate that they had given up hope. The stories differ in that the situation in Sudbury was caused by irresponsible industrial pollution, that of the Loess Plateau by the desperation of poverty. But in both cases the transformation was brought about through the actions of many people working together to change their situation.
Miracles Happen
When I visited Sudbury, in Ontario, Canada, for the first time in the mid-1990s, I had gone to give a lecture at the university—and while I was there I heard a fantastic story. A story of destruction and renewal that so inspired me that I returned, several years later, to learn more about this Read More
It was the people of Sudbury who got together to do something about their terrible, polluted environment. It was the government in China, with support of the World Bank, that organized the people of the Loess Plateau to change things. My friend John Liu, in Beijing, has talked to me for hours about this Read More
