Word: planeteers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...first in our new five-part series, Visions 21. The idea of the series is to probe the next century by asking 100 provocative questions and then doing our best to answer them. This week we explore the first 20 questions, about our health and the health of our planet...
...hold for us. We trust that the future will outmarvel the past, but all we can say for sure is that our lives will change more swiftly than ever. In the following pages we ask what we hope are provocative questions about our health and the health of our planet. The sobering news is that we will have more people to care for; the good news is that technology and common sense should allow us to take better care of the place we call home. Meanwhile, the imminent mapping of the human genome--all 140,000 genes--could lead...
...mass-producing cattle, poultry, pigs, sheep and fish to feed our growing population. These costs include hugely inefficient use of freshwater and land, heavy pollution from livestock feces, rising rates of heart disease and other degenerative illnesses, and spreading destruction of the forests on which much of our planet's life depends...
What has proved an unsustainable burden to the life of the planet is also proving unsustainable for the planet's dominant species. In China a recent shift to meat-heavy diets has been linked to increases in obesity, cardiovascular disease, breast cancer and colorectal cancer. U.S. and World Health Organization researchers have announced similar findings for other parts of the world. And then there are the growing concerns about what happens to people who eat the flesh of animals that have been pumped full of genetically modified organisms, hormones and antibiotics...
...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...