Word: arally
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...instance, he cites global warming as the reason why an egg can be fried on some streets in the Southwest. Gore actually starts the book by telling the foreboding story of the Aral Sea, now no longer a sea but a desert--thanks to the abuses of humans (there are even pictures to prove it). Gore continues his list of horror by relating numerous stories about cultures around the world that are self-destructing...
...Soviet Union, the mismanagement of land around the Aral Sea has cut it off from its sources of water, causing the volume of the once giant lake to shrink by two-thirds in 30 years. Now storms of salt and pesticides swirl up from the receding shoreline, contaminating the land and afflicting millions of Uzbeks with gastritis, typhoid and throat cancer. In Beijing, one-third of the city's wells have gone dry, and the water table drops by as much as 2 meters (2.2 yards) a year. In the Western U.S., four years of drought have left municipalities...
...Kazakhstan many atomic-weapons tests have been conducted, but the people were never consulted. So there is a conflict now between the republic and the center. There is also the tragedy of the Aral Sea, which is dying. Prices for the republic's wool, coal, metallurgy and grain are set by the center, and the republic loses. Kazakhstan should decide its own cultural and economic problems, except those it willingly gives over to the center, such as the defense of borders or railroad lines...
...could hardly be more urgent. According to Alexei Yablokov, the outspoken deputy chairman of the Supreme Soviet's ecology committee, as many as 50 million Soviet citizens live in areas where pollution levels are at least ten times as high as state safety standards permit. In parts of the Aral Sea region, which is heavily contaminated by chemical fertilizers and pesticides, two-thirds of the people have reported environment-related health problems...
...land and water are not in any better shape. The riverbed of the Neva, which meanders beside the magnificent Hermitage in Leningrad, is covered with a thick layer of oil. Ill-advised dam construction and inappropriate irrigation projects have caused the level of the Aral Sea to drop 40 ft. It is possible that this body of water, the world's sixth largest sea, will not exist in 20 years. Siberia, once pristine, is laced with wastes from steel, chemical and coal industries. Worrisome numbers of dead sturgeon are floating atop the polluted Volga River, threatening the Soviets' prestigious caviar...