Word: planetful
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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...
Then there is the question of punishment. In Dante's purgatory, the punishment for envy was to have your eyes sewn shut with iron wire. But these were personal punishments for individual crimes. When societies sin--dismissing the poor, despoiling the planet--who, exactly, should pay, and how? I am responsible for the lies I tell or the fries I crave and have a duty to give to the poor. But what about social injustice? How do I dissect the sources to find the sin? I try not to litter, but I have to drive. Am I a sinner...
...most pressing global problems--poverty, hunger, disease, the environment--as long as we think of ourselves as a single group or entity and not as a collection of competing nation-states. Sachs' provocative and inspiring essay is adapted from his new book, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet...
...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...