Word: burn
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...million different life- forms on earth have been cataloged. Since hundreds of thousands of species may be extinct by the year 2000, the world has neither the scientists nor the time to identify the yet uncounted. "It's as though the nations of the world decided to burn their libraries without bothering to see what is in them," said University of Pennsylvania biologist Daniel Janzen at the TIME conference. Harvard's Wilson called this profligacy the "folly" that future generations are least likely to forgive...
...first step toward doing that is to ban the production of CFCs, which are used to make plastic foam and as coolants in refrigerators and air conditioners. These gases account for an estimated 15% of the greenhouse effect. Another strategy is to burn as much methane as possible. That adds CO2 to the air, but getting rid of the methane is well worth it. Both gases trap heat, but as a greenhouse gas, methane traps 20 times as much heat as carbon dioxide, molecule for molecule...
Ebullience does not mean blindness. Asimov is alarmed by overpopulation, with its insatiable demand for natural resources. He is not sanguine about the medical establishment's inability to find a cure for AIDS: "It may just burn itself out the way the bubonic plague did in the London of 1665. But this tragic disease moves much more slowly. It might take a century to disappear." And wars and weapons continually remind him about the fragility of Spaceship Earth. But in the Asimovian view, that fragility is an echo of his personal history. He was felled by a heart attack...
...there are some lesser talents who have not been mentioned in this piece who might take a cue and find a new way of working for a living. As the indefatigable Neil Young once suggested, "It's better to burn out than to fade away...
...count' em--plays that are filling Harvard stages this weekend and next. For the most part, the selection is a stampede of warhorses that you've probably seen before. Still, there should be entertainment aplenty to take your mind off of the inevitable December stress--provided you don't burn yourself out rushing from play to play...