Word: despoil
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...However, the task involves an unprecedented degree of communication and cooperation among communities, cities, states and national governments, as well as corporations and foundations. Overview hopes to be the catalyst. Its undertakings could range from locating a factory in a rural area so that it would enhance rather than despoil the environment, to designing whole new cities and sanitizing polluted international waterways...
...innocence. The U.S. was still the world's pre-eminent power, still reveled in the accouterments of prosperity, still enjoyed a standard of living far more abundant than that of any other civilization. But 1967 awakened many of its citizens to the fact that conscienceless affluence can not only despoil the environment and drive a deprived underclass to the brink of rebellion; it can also pervade society with a sense of impotence and bring on the loss of unifying purpose...
...anti-Christian philosophers were ready to defend this paradise. The Encyclopedist Diderot warned that Europeans would despoil the Tahitians' Eden with "dagger and crucifix." The Rousseauian enthusiasts overlooked a few things: the Tahitians waged war and practiced human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism; they even had priests, an unamiable group who killed all their own offspring, apparently on trade-union principles...
...Science Advisory Committee last week, are "barely enough to stay even in managing pollution, surely not enough to make the improvements that are needed." To add economic incentive to the fight, the panel suggested that air and water polluters be taxed in proportion to how much they despoil the environment. The scientists had a name for the proposed levy: "effluent charges...
...ironic sequel to West Germans' hopes of "belonging to the world" is that GERMANS GO HOME signs have sprouted in Europe, largely as a result of a few ruthless speculators who boost prices, and the selfish Germans who despoil the scenery with barbed wire and Verboten signs. In Ireland, where onetime SS Hero Otto Skorzeny now raises prizewinning lambs, the clergy has even tried to persuade farmers that it is "patriotic" not to sell their land. One indignant priest, who had twice been chased off a German-owned beach, complained from the pulpit: "Has the day really come when...