Word: weather
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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There are precedents. We made human sacrifice, once commonplace, obsolete. We made slavery obsolete. These things, just like changes in weather patterns, took a long period of time. But now, just as climate changes are telescoped into a very short period of time, changes in human thinking of a magnitude comparable to the changes that brought about the abolition of slavery must take place in one generation...
Most of these evils had been going on for a long time, and some of the worst disasters apparently had nothing to do with human behavior. Yet this year's bout of freakish weather and environmental horror stories seemed to act as a powerful catalyst for worldwide public opinion. Everyone suddenly sensed that this gyrating globe, this precious repository of all the life that we know of, ^ was in danger. No single individual, no event, no movement captured imaginations or dominated headlines more than the clump of rock and soil and water and air that is our common home. Thus...
...atmosphere could drive up the planet's average temperature 3 degrees F to 9 degrees F by the middle of the next century. That could cause the oceans to rise by several feet, flooding coastal areas and ruining huge tracts of farmland through salinization. Changing weather patterns could make huge areas infertile or uninhabitable, touching off refugee movements unprecedented in history...
...lighters.) But the rest of the world continued to use CFC-based aerosol cans, and overall CFC production kept growing. The threat became far clearer in 1985, when researchers reported a "hole" in the ozone layer over Antarctica. Although the size of the hole varies with the seasons and weather patterns, at times Antarctic ozone has been depleted by as much as 50% in some spots. As a result of this disturbing development, 24 nations, including the U.S. and the Soviet Union, met in Montreal two summers ago and agreed to cut back on CFCs. The so-called Montreal Protocol...
However, Fantini cautioned that outside the polarized City Council, "politics in Cambridge really is like the weather--it can change...