Word: planet
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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...
Here's what we know. Since sunlight is always falling on the earth, the laws of physics decree that the planet has to radiate the same amount of energy back into space to keep the books balanced. The earth does this by sending infrared radiation out through the atmosphere, where an array of molecules (the best known is carbon dioxide) form a kind of blanket, holding outgoing radiation for a while and warming the surface. The molecules are similar to the glass in a greenhouse, which is why the warming process is called the greenhouse effect...
...simple. The world is a complex place, and reducing it to the climatologist's tool of choice--the computer model--isn't easy. Around almost every statement in the greenhouse debate is a penumbra of uncertainty that results from our current inability to capture the full complexity of the planet in our models...
...critter, that's what we're doing. After climbing steadily for the past 50 years, the worldwide catch of seafood has begun to drop. We're fishing out the oceans, at the same time that the need for seafood is soaring. Of the 6 billion of us on the planet, 1 billion rely on fish as their primary source of protein...
...seas make up 95% of the planet's biosphere--the realm where all living things exist--and we are stripping and poisoning it, depriving it of its ability to sustain life. Jacques-Yves Cousteau once predicted that unless we--not the editorial or royal we but the universal we--changed our ways and stopped treating the oceans as an infinite resource and a bottomless dump, there would someday come a moment of no recovery. Overwhelmed at last, the resilient seas would no longer be able to cleanse or restock themselves. From that moment on, the oceans--and with them nearly...