Word: millions
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Whoever said "waste not, want not" hasn't had much influence on 276 million Americans. In 1997 we gave a collective heave-ho to more than 430 billion lbs. of garbage. That means each man, woman and child tossed out an average of nearly 1,600 lbs. of banana peels, Cheerios boxes, gum wrappers, Coke cans, ratty sofas, TIME magazines, car batteries, disposable diapers, yard trimmings, junk mail, worn-out Nikes--plus whatever else goes into your trash cans. An equivalent weight of water could fill 68,000 Olympic-size pools...
There is one fact, though, that everyone agrees on: the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing steadily. It is near 360 parts per million today, vs. 315 p.p.m. in 1958 (when modern measurements started) and 270 p.p.m. in preindustrial times (as measured by air bubbles trapped in the Greenland ice sheet...
...declared open war on the very local ecosystems that had until then been our home. As preagricultural hunter-gatherers, we humans held niches in ecosystems, and those niches, resource-limited as they always were, had indeed kept our numbers down. Estimates vary, but a figure of roughly 6 million people on Earth at the beginning of agriculture is reasonable. By 1798 the population reached 900 million. Agriculture altered how we related to the natural world and, in liberating us from the confines of the local ecosystem, removed the Malthusian lid in one fell swoop...
...virtually all over the globe. Our cities, suburbs and malls have paved over natural communities, and pollution and overfishing are rapidly destroying our rivers, lakes and oceans. As these ecosystems go down, we are losing perhaps 30,000 species of animals and plants a year, out of perhaps 10 million total species, even though we still deeply rely on at least 40,000 species for food, shelter, clothing and fuel. We rely on natural products to replenish genetic diversity in our crops and to produce new medicines. We rely on pristine ecosystems to replenish oxygen, regulate water cycles, control erosion...
Powell could scarcely have imagined that a century after his feat, more than 2 million tourists would visit the Grand Canyon annually--among them families with small children who would float down the once fearsome Colorado as a summer lark. During the past 30 years, annual visitation to the Grand Canyon has ballooned from 2 million to more than 5 million. If you want to paddle down the Grand Canyon on your own, without hiring a commercial outfitter, the waiting list for boating permits is now so long that you won't be able to launch your raft until...