Word: needing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...should people in developed countries care about the survival of tropical species never seen outside a rain forest? Yes, they should. Variety is the spice of life, goes the saying. Biologists would go further and argue that variety is the very stuff of life. Life needs diversity because of the interdependencies that link flora and fauna, and because variation within species allows them to adapt to environmental challenges. But even as the world's human population explodes, other life is ebbing from the planet. Humanity is making a risky wager -- that it does not need the great variety of earth...
...very survival, of the species. "We do not have generations, we only have years, in which to attempt to turn things around," warns Lester Brown, president of the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute. Every individual on the planet must be made aware of its vulnerability and of the urgent need to preserve it. No attempt to protect the environment will be successful in the long run unless ordinary people -- the California housewife, the Mexican peasant, the Soviet factory worker, the Chinese farmer -- are willing to adjust their life-styles. Our wasteful, careless ways must become a thing of the past...
...spur conservation is to raise the cost of fossil fuels. Current prices fail to reflect the very real environmental costs of pumping carbon dioxide into the air. The answer is a tax on CO2 emissions -- or a CO2 user fee, if that is a more palatable term. The fee need not raise a country's overall tax burden; it could be offset by reductions in income taxes or other levies...
...carriers need the planes to keep up with worldwide passenger travel, which is growing some 7% a year and backing up taxiways at airports from Hong Kong to Dallas. To cope with the crowding, carriers are buying larger aircraft, reducing the number of individual flights. A new midrange Boeing 767, which carries as many as 260 travelers, can replace two smaller 727s or Douglas...
That last touch -- the voice from Limbo -- is Davies' only deviation from strict narrative plausibility, and it is a minor one at that. Hoffmann cannot intercede in the proceedings; he is just another spectator along with the readers. Davies does not need spooks or disembodied souls to demonstrate that even the most mundane, realistic events can be steeped in magic. Simon Darcourt, an Anglican clergyman, a professor of Greek and the secretary of the Cornish Foundation, believes "that everybody had a personal myth," that people's lives unfold in accordance with invisible but implacable patterns. Despite his extensive education, Darcourt...