Word: toxicants
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...smother the planet, raising temperatures, turning farmland to desert, swelling oceans anywhere from four feet to 20 feet. Goodbye Venice, goodbye Bangladesh. Goodbye to millions of species of animals, insects and plants that haven't already succumbed to acid rain, ultraviolet radiation leaking through the damaged ozone layer, spreading toxic wastes or bulldozers...
...intelligence. A forest or a coral reef or a whole planet, then, with its checks and balances and feedback loops and delicate adjustments always striving for light and equilibrium, is like a mind. In this way of thinking, pollution is literal insanity (Bateson was also a psychologist). To dump toxic waste in a swamp, say, is like trying to repress a bad thought or like hitting your wife every night and assuming that because she doesn't fight back, you can abuse her with impunity -- 30 years later she sets your bed on fire...
...international triumphs have not protected her from some searing reviews at home. "Norway has some of the most polluted fjords in the world," charges Geir Wang-Andersen, a toxic-waste activist for Greenpeace. "People abroad see her as this great environmentalist -- but we just laugh a little, because we don't see her that...
...achievement that will prove increasingly valuable to mankind as it yields its secrets. Agronomists see the forest as a cornucopia of undiscovered food sources, and chemists scour the flora and fauna for compounds with seemingly magical properties. For instance, the piquia tree produces a compound that appears to be toxic to leaf-cutter ants, which cause millions of dollars of damage each year to South American agriculture. Such chemicals promise attractive alternatives to dangerous synthetic pesticides. Other jungle chemicals have already led to new treatments for hypertension and some forms of cancer. The lessons encoded in the genes...
...fight with Reilly." Darman argued in one meeting that the clean-air proposals were too expensive for the health and safety benefits gained. "For the same amount of money," the Budget Director said, "we can buy everyone in America rubber- soled shoes, because the chance of being killed by toxic gases is about the same as being killed by lightning." Bush is proud of these bouts and prefers them to the staged-managed sessions held for Reagan. "I've been to Cabinet meetings when ((they have)) been a show-and-tell," Bush said. "We don't do ours that...