Word: planeteers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...already have a full-occupancy planet," says Noel Brown, North American director of the U.N. Environment Program. Today 80% of deforestation results from population growth. If the numbers keep rising until 2050, the U.N. estimates, an additional 5.9 million sq km (2.3 million sq. mi.) of land will have to be turned over to farming, roads and urban uses. This is almost equivalent to the total size of protected natural areas on earth today. Most good agricultural land is already under plow, and each year desertification, improper irrigation and overuse take millions of acres out of production. Farms may increase...
...official and unofficial events, among them an environmental technology fair, a scientific symposium and a meeting of mayors. Peter Max's art will appear on special postage stamps. A Robert Rauschenberg poster will be slapped up on walls. Placido Domingo will headline a star-studded musical tribute to the planet. And a full-size replica of a 9th century Viking ship will sail in from Norway carrying messages of goodwill from children all over the world...
...Summit, held 20 years ago in Stockholm (and also chaired by the indefatigable Strong). That event, which launched thousands of grass-roots conservation groups around the world and spawned environmental agencies and ministries in more than 115 nations, was held in the shadow of the cold war, when the planet was divided into rival East and West blocs and preoccupied with the perils of the nuclear arms race. With the collapse of the East bloc and the thawing of the cold war, a fundamental shift in the global axis of power has occurred. Today the more meaningful division -- especially...
...farmers, meanwhile, have lost nearly 500 million tons of topsoil, an amount equal to the tillable soil coverage of India and France combined. Lakes, rivers, even whole seas have been turned into sewers and industrial sumps. And tens of thousands of plant and animal species that shared the planet with us in 1972 have since disappeared...
...disparities that mark individual countries are mirrored in the planet as a whole. Most of its wealth is concentrated in the North. "The reality is that there are many worlds on this planet," says Chee Yokling, a Malaysian representative of Friends of the Earth, "rich worlds and poor worlds." From the South's point of view, it is the rich worlds' profligate consumption patterns -- their big cars, refrigerators and climate-controlled shopping malls -- that are the problem. "You can't have an environmentally healthy planet in a world that is socially unjust," says Brazilian President Fernando Collor de Mello. Counters...