Word: deserts
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...surge into the Gulf of California, depositing ruddy-colored silt that fanned out into a broad delta of new land at its mouth, hardly ever makes it to the sea anymore. The once mighty Colorado fizzles into a trickle, its last traces evaporating in the heat of the Mexican desert...
...dawn in the West, where rugged individualists have traditionally cocked a snoot at natural restrictions, rolled up their sleeves and hacked or drilled the world of their dreams out of the wilderness. Something in the Western temperament strives mightily to deny that much of the region is a desert -- witness the tropical extravagance of Beverly Hills, the emerald golf courses of Palm Springs, the ubiquitous swimming pools throughout the West...
...water employed by Western farmers: the practice of irrigating fields by flooding them, thus allowing much of the water to run off the fields or bake off in the heat; the production of "thirsty" crops like rice and cotton in areas only inches of water away from being desert...
...Aurora. Prices soon soared to more than $700 an acre-foot. Now what used to be 70,000 acres of irrigated land has shrunk to 5,000 acres, and the closing of dozens of farms has wrecked the local tax base. "We're drifting back to dry-land desert," says farmer Orville Tomky, who has farmed in the county for 40 years. "Everything is slowly drying up. The cities have bought nearly all the water in the county. Maybe we'll just default and be taken over by the state...
...West European governments have been out front in meeting the challenge. In the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, the leaders of France and Britain nudged Bush into establishing sanctuaries for the Kurds. The Ukraine, which is untying many of its bonds to Moscow, finds Paris and Rome more supportive than Washington. In their attempt to defuse the Yugoslav crisis, the Europeans did their share of flailing around. But they still seemed a bit more responsive to the Slovenes than the U.S initially did. The explanation goes beyond geographical proximity and relates to the transformation of the continent itself...