Word: needfulness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Neither of these explanations need trouble us. We are not going to use cloning to make the whole of the next generation from one individual (though in the 1930s several eminent geneticists thought that when IVF became available, lots of people would rush out to choose prominent men such as Lenin as a father--which just goes to show how wrong geneticists can be about the future). Also, genetic mutations accumulate much too slowly to worry...
From about 2.5 million B.C. to, say, 100 years ago, the system worked fine. Only a tiny percentage of humans had unlimited access to food and no need to lift a finger on their own behalf. What happened to them? Picture Henry VIII. But over the past century or so, most Americans have been living like kings. Thanks to increasingly high-tech farming methods, the fatty foods we crave have become plentiful and cheap in the U.S. and other developed nations. At the same time (thanks again to technology), physical exertion is no longer a part of most people...
That prospect will doubtless provoke protests that direct consumption of grain can't provide the same protein that meat provides. Indeed, it can't. But nutritionists will attest that most people in the richest countries don't need nearly as much protein as we're currently getting from meat, and there are plenty of vegetable sources--including the grains now squandered on feed--that can provide the protein we need...
...covering more and more of the planet with our cities, farms and waste, we have jeopardized other top predators that need space as well. Tigers and panthers are being squeezed out and may not last the coming century. We, at least, have the flexibility--the omnivorous stomach and creative brain--to adapt. We can do it by moving down the food chain: eating foods that use less water and land, and that pollute far less, than cows and pigs do. In the long run, we can lose our memory of eating animals, and we will discover the intrinsic satisfactions...
...really bad news is that most of the planet's 6 billion people are just beginning to follow in the trash-filled footsteps of the U.S. and the rest of the developed world. "Either we need to control ourselves or nature will," says Gary Liss of Loomis, Calif., a veteran of recycling and solid-waste programs who advises clients aiming to reduce landfill deposits. As he sees it, garbage--maybe every last pound of it--needs to become a vile thing of the past...