Word: grounde
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...hero, Truman, who regularly ranks among the top 10 Presidents of all time. One of the things historians admire about him is his willingness to acknowledge when victory was beyond reach. It started with China. In 1949, America's man in Beijing, Chiang Kai-shek, was steadily losing ground to communist rebels. Hawkish politicians and pundits demanded that Truman intervene, and when he didn't and China fell to Mao Zedong, they accused his government of appeasement and worse. Joseph McCarthy, who rose to prominence in the wake of China's fall, cited Truman's refusal to rescue Chiang...
...that point, Truman faced a choice. His commander on the ground, General Douglas MacArthur, demanded victory, which meant full-scale war with Beijing. Dropping 30 to 50 atom bombs on Manchuria, he suggested, would do the trick. But Truman refused. He fired MacArthur, refused to bomb China and, in a humiliating reversal, abandoned the dream of a liberated Korea. Instead, the U.S. fought to an unsatisfying draw, with an eventual cease-fire reaffirming the border between North and South. MacArthur denounced the new strategy, and Truman's approval ratings--already damaged by the loss of China--sank below 30%, where...
...easy to mock His Royal Highness; in England it's practically the national sport. But his critics may be onto something. Jets are uniquely polluting, and the carbon they emit at high altitudes appears to have a greater warming effect than the same amount of carbon released on the ground by cars or factories. On an individual level, a single long-haul flight can emit more carbon per passenger than months of SUV driving. Though air travel is responsible for only 1.6% of total greenhouse gas emissions, according to one estimate, in many countries it's the fastest-growing single...
...biggest problems, as the IPCC points out, is that the carbon emitted by air travel currently has "no technofix." As messy a source of pollution as electricity generation and ground transportation are, technologies do exist that could drastically cut carbon from power plants and cars. Not so for planes: the same aircraft models will almost certainly be flying on the same kerosene fuel for decades...
...over the past 40 years, with technological upgrades more than doubling efficiency. There are tweaks in aircraft operations that could nip carbon emissions even further. Virgin Atlantic airlines tycoon Richard Branson, who last year pledged $3 billion in the fight against climate change, advocates having planes towed on the ground rather than taxiing, which he has said could cut a yet unspecified portion of fuel on long flights. Emissions trading for the air industry could help as well, with airlines given carbon caps and then being required to purchase credits from other industries if they exceed their limits. But there...