Word: toxication
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...South Korean-built Pontiac LeMans and Japan's Nissan Maxima emit less than 0.2 gram of nitrogen oxide per mile. At the same time, Chrysler sells its California dealers a $100 pump that helps cars meet restrictions by recirculating exhaust through the engine and catalytic converter to reduce toxic emissions...
...easy to believe ourselves absolved of any responsibility for environmental destruction. After all, none of us has ever poured a barrel of toxic waste into a pristine stream. The very thought should apall us. But in the end, it is our adherence to the culture of convenience that leads others to such actions...
...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...