Word: planets
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...live "their finest hour," F.D.R.'s pragmatic idealism giving hope and jobs to Depression-ridden Americans. Now, more than ever, the world needs leaders who can inspire their fellow citizens with a fiery sense of mission, not a nationalistic or military campaign but a universal crusade to save the planet. Unless mankind embraces that cause totally, and without delay, it may have no alternative to the bang of nuclear holocaust or the whimper of slow extinction...
This week's unorthodox choice of Endangered Earth as Planet of the Year, in lieu of the usual Man or Woman of the Year, had its origin in the scorching summer of 1988, when environmental disasters -- droughts, floods, forest fires, polluted beaches -- dominated the news. By August TIME knew it was no longer enough just to describe familiar problems one more time. "The new journalistic challenge," says managing editor Henry Muller, "was to help / find solutions, and that by definition meant international solutions." So we invited a distinguished group of scientists, administrators and political leaders from five continents...
Even before Thompson's preparations were complete, our editors decided that the growing concern about the planet's future had become the year's most important story. Thus was born the idea of using the conference as the centerpiece of this week's 33-page package, which was coordinated by sciences editor Charles Alexander. It is not the first time the magazine has recognized something other than humans in its Man of the Year issue. In 1982 it named the computer Machine of the Year...
...difficult problem: how to create a strikingly original cover image. Their solution was to approach Christo, the famed Bulgarian-born environmental sculptor. In earlier works Christo had draped in plastic large sections of the earth -- a stretch of Australian coast, a canyon in Colorado -- but never the whole planet. This time Christo bundled a 16-in. globe in polyethylene and rag rope and drove more than 350 miles up and down New York's Long Island in search of the perfect combination of light, air and sea for a photograph. The result -- Wrapped Globe 1988 -- is a fitting symbol...
Ironically, the same greenhouse effect that may be so dislocating made earth hospitable to life in the first place. Without a heat-trapping blanket of naturally occurring CO2, the planet would have an average surface temperature of only 0 degrees F instead of 59 degrees F. Reason: like the glass panes of a greenhouse, CO2 molecules are transparent to visible light, allowing the sun's rays to warm the earth's surface. But when the surface gives off its excess heat, it does so not with visible light but with infrared radiation. And since CO2 absorbs infrared rays, some...