Word: planetful
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Anyone who has taken a general-science course knows that Earth's most important elements move in cycles, circulating from sky to land and sea and back again. The human presence has become so dominant that we have disrupted even these most basic mechanisms of the planet. Most familiar, of course, is what we have done to the carbon cycle. Because we are pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than land and seas can reabsorb it, the accumulating gas is trapping heat and upsetting the climate. The result is not only rising seas and fiercer storms but also...
Halting the decline of the planet's life-support systems may be the most difficult challenge humanity has ever faced. The report specifies some common-sense steps in the right direction. For instance, governments can eliminate the estimated $700 billion in annual subsidies that spur the destruction of ecosystems. In Tunisia, water is priced at one-seventh of what it costs to pump, encouraging waste. In the mid-1980s, Indonesia spent $150 million annually to subsidize pesticide use. With access to cheap chemicals, Indonesian farmers poured pesticides onto their rice fields, killing pests, to be sure, but also causing human...
...water that made the Everglades a natural wonderland. Billions more will be spent removing phosphorus from agricultural runoff, restoring habitats and modifying development plans to reduce stress on the system, but there is no guarantee that even these efforts will bring back the Everglades. The unsettling prospect that the planet's richest nation may not have the wherewithal to restore a vital ecosystem underscores a theme that runs through the U.N. report and should guide development decisions in the coming years: it is far less expensive to halt destructive practices before an ecosystem collapses than...
...Program, the U.N. Environment Program and the World Resources Institute confirm their "commitment to making the viability of the world's ecosystems a critical development priority for the 21st century." These are sweeping words, but the jury on this commitment will be composed of the world's ecosystems. The planet itself will let us know, in the harshest possible manner, if our words are not being backed by action...
...enter the 21st century, a new global economy draws nations ever closer. But our growing interdependence hinges on much more than technology and trade. For we are linked intrinsically by the physical and biological webs that sustain life on our planet--and, increasingly, by the threat of their unraveling. Indeed, unless we reach across borders and face this threat together, the next century may dawn on an Earth in ecological crisis, with half of all species gone, and our grandchildren enduring deadly floods, drought and disease brought on by global warming...