Word: rios
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...most successful Mars-related product has so far proved to be Mattel's Hot Wheels Mars Rover Action Pack (for a mere $5 you get mini versions of Sojourner, Pathfinder and the lander), those who would rather own something more real than realistic may contact Dennis Hope of Rio Vista, Calif. He will sell you 2,000 acres of prime Mars real estate for $19.99 plus shipping and handling and $1.51 for Martian tax. In 1980 Hope informed various Earth governments that he was claiming ownership of all the land in the solar system; inasmuch as no one protested...
...five years--real changes in the attitude of ordinary people in the Third World toward family size and a dawning realization that environmental degradation and their own well-being are intimately, and inversely, linked. Almost none of this, however, has anything to do with what the bureaucrats accomplished in Rio...
...didn't accomplish. One item on the agenda at Rio, for example, was a renewed effort to save tropical forests. (A previous U.N.-sponsored initiative had fallen apart when it became clear that it actually hastened deforestation.) After Rio, a U.N. working group came up with more than 100 recommendations that have so far gone nowhere. One proposed forestry pact would do little more than immunize wood-exporting nations against trade sanctions...
...what to do about the climate changes caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gases has fared even worse. Blocked by the Bush Administration from setting mandatory limits, the U.N. in 1992 called on nations to voluntarily reduce emissions to 1990 levels. Five years later, it's as if Rio had never happened. A new climate treaty is scheduled to be signed this December in Kyoto, Japan, but governments still cannot agree on limits. Meanwhile, the U.S. produces 7% more CO2 than it did in 1990, and emissions in the developing world have risen even more sharply. No one would confuse...
While governments have dithered at a pace that could make drifting continents impatient, people have acted. Birthrates are dropping faster than expected, not because of Rio but because poor people are deciding on their own to limit family size. Another positive development has been a growing environmental consciousness among the poor. From slum dwellers in Karachi, Pakistan, to colonists in Rondonia, Brazil, urban poor and rural peasants alike seem to realize that they pay the biggest price for pollution and deforestation. There is cause for hope as well in the growing recognition among businesspeople that it is not in their...