Word: suffere
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Actually, I don't have bladder control problems, but this hypothetical scenario aptly illustrates how Americans in particular and humans in general foolishly ignore pressing environmental questions. We are unwilling to suffer minor inconvenience now for the sake of a habitable planet later...
...have a fault line all its own. On one side of that psychic divide, Americans shrug off demonstrable threats: they build houses on eroding beaches, speed without wearing seat belts, go hang gliding and expose themselves to the cancer-causing rays of the sun. On the other side, they suffer a bad case of the jitters about the smallest threat to personal well-being. They flee from apples that might bear a trace of Alar and fret about radon, nuclear power...
Soon survivors will suffer a host of complaints, from headaches and stomach pains to flashbacks and suicidal thoughts. Victims of Hurricane Hugo, which lashed the Southeastern U.S. last month, are showing the expected strains. "About all of the people we talk to have sleep disturbances," says Dr. James Ballenger, head of the psychiatric institute at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. "They are constantly fatigued. They leave briefcases at home. They forget appointments. They cannot concentrate...
...transplants performed in the U.S. each year are often successful only because the patients take a daily dose of cyclosporine. The drug keeps their immune systems from attacking and rejecting the foreign organs. But it is not perfect. Some 70% of patients getting a new liver, for example, still suffer rejection episodes. And many organ recipients face life- threatening side effects from cyclosporine, including an increased risk of cancer and heart disease...
...hopelessly mired in anthropocentrism, but I find McKibben's argument a bit elitist. The people who would suffer most by a general cutback in technology are those who don't have a house in the mountains. Citizens of underdeveloped countries and America's own poor depend on technolgy as a means of providing food, as a gateway to better lives. Who is to be sacrificed so that the wealthy of today and tommorow can enjoy gardens...