Word: buffer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...More convincingly, some agricultural officials in Tokyo caution that the countryside must be protected from development to maintain the aesthetic appeal of the shimmering paddies. The land would be ravaged by typhoons without well-tended rice fields, which act as sponges during heavy rains and are a buffer against erosion, according to farmers. "The rice paddies prevent floods and landslides and maintain the Japanese landscape," says Masahiro Konno, general manager at the WTO office of Japan's Central Union of Agricultural Co-operatives. "A destruction of the rice farm will destroy agriculture in Japan...
...Washington's interest in bolstering the alliance is plain, so is Tokyo's. Koizumi has made a strategic decision to yoke his nation ever more tightly to the U.S. as a buffer to the seemingly inexorable rise of China, measured not least by the rapid modernization of its armed forces. During his four and a half years in office, Koizumi has pushed Japan and its so-called Self-Defense Force into a much higher profile on the world stage. In 2002, the Japanese destroyer Kirishima set sail for the Indian Ocean to help refuel U.S. and allied ships involved...
Hurricane Katrina was a catastrophe that was made worse by the U.S. government's refusal to ensure domestic tranquillity. To do that requires Big Government to maintain coherent transportation and communications systems and coordinate land management that allows the ecosystem to serve as a buffer against natural calamity. Big Government must organize access to medical care for all individuals. But Big Government has been under constant attack for decades. Most people see it as the cause of Americans' woes rather than as part of the solution. Big Government is not the enemy; Bad Government is--inept, shortsighted and self-serving...
Hurricane Katrina was a catastrophe caused by the U.S. government's refusal to ensure domestic tranquillity. To do that requires Big Government to maintain coherent transportation and communications systems and coordinate land management that allows the ecosystem to serve as a buffer against natural calamity. Big Government must organize access to medical care for all individuals. But Big Government has been under constant attack for decades, seen as the cause of Americans' woes rather than as part of the solution. Big Government is not the enemy, Bad Government is - inept, shortsighted and self-serving. Francis Mickus Paris...
...decade or more, victims of man-made canals that carry brackish water from Lake Pontchartrain, poisoning the cypress. Biologists call this a ghost swamp, one of many throughout the delta. When Katrina's winds howled in from the lake, the thinned forest around Bayou LaBranche could do little to buffer the impact on the communities of Norco and Good Hope to the south. Nor could the area's old marshland slow the storm surge that followed; most of the marsh had long since been turned into a salty lake...