Word: planet
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Universes within universes - the interdependency of all living things everywhere - is Geisel's theme in Horton. In the Jungle of Nool something foreign lands on a piece of clover. It's not a spaceship but an entire alien world: the nearly infinitesimal planet of Who-ville. Horton the elephant, his large ears giving him the most acute hearing, detects cries from the clover speck. He can't see the little Whos, but he deduces, believes, knows that sentient creatures are in there; and his caring instinct tells him that they must be protected. He builds a rapport with the tiny...
...most environmentalists, the answer to that depressing litany is to keep pushing the same message harder: cut carbon and cut it now. But a few scientists are beginning to quietly raise the possibility of cooling the planet's fever directly through geoengineering. The principle behind it is straightforward - compensate for an intensified greenhouse effect by reducing the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth - but the techniques seem like pure science fiction. Just a few: using orbital mirrors to bounce sunlight back into space, fertilizing the oceans with iron to amplify their ability to absorb carbon and even painting roofs...
...slowly emerging as an option of last resort. The tipping point came in 2006, when the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric scientist Paul Crutzen published an editorial examining the possibility of releasing vast amounts of sulfurous debris into the atmosphere to create a haze that would keep the planet cool. "Over the past couple of years, it's gone from an outsider thing to something that is increasingly discussed," says Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University...
...more cooperative approach in society. I hope that’s the case, because certainly when you look at the environmental problem we face, it’s very serious. In fact unless we make some fundamental changes we’re going to cook ourselves off the planet in the next hundred years. And that problem can only be addressed cooperatively. Our individualism, our libertarianism, our republican selfishness is not serving us well in terms of human governance...
...Davies wants offenders named and shamed, and the worst ones to be thrown in jail. But he says the Parliament shot itself in the foot by trying to keep the report secret. "It was utterly pathetic, naïve and hypocritical. You wonder what planet they grew up on," he says. "The European Parliament is doing good work. But in terms of recognition and acceptance by the wide European public, these incidents can only harm it. And that's a shame...