Word: may
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...matter how great our technology, we'll still have to go mano a mano with the microbes. We may not completely win the 21st century bug hunt, but I am confident that we won't lose...
Which returns us to gasoline and its source, petroleum. The earth's underground stores of petroleum are not quite as ample as those of coal or natural gas, but there is enough to supply humanity for many decades, even with rising population and living standards. Crippling shortages may still occur, of course. But they will arise from skulduggery or incompetence on the part of corporations or governments, not from any physical scarcity...
...That may seem impossible, but it's not unprecedented. In nature, Liss points out, there is no such thing as waste. What dies or is discarded from one part of an ecosystem nourishes another part. Liss says humanity can emulate nature's garbage-free ways, but it will require innovative technology and a big change in attitude...
Biotechnology is giving us additional tools to cope with waste--and turn it to our advantage. We now have microbes that can take toxic substances in contaminated soil or sludge--including organic solvents and industrial oils--and convert them into harmless by-products. Soon we may be using genetic engineering to create what Reid Lifset, editor of the Journal of Industrial Ecology, calls "designer waste streams." Consider all that stalk, or stover, that every corn plant grows along with its kernels. Scientists at Monsanto and Heartland Fiber are working toward engineering corn plants with the kind of fiber content that...
...find uses for the diminishing amount of discarded materials. Maybe, with the help of brokering services on the Internet, we can generalize the principle that governs garage sales: One person's garbage is another's treasure. When that attitude goes global, the human beings of the third millennium may be able to look back on their former garbage-producing ways as a forgivable error of their youth as a species...