Word: humaneness
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...largest remaining cheetah population--about 3,000--inhabits the harshly beautiful savannah of Namibia in southwest Africa. That's where conservation biologist Laurie Marker, founder of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, hopes to ensure the great cat's survival. She sees it as a test case of whether human development and wildlife habitats can coexist. "If we can save the cheetah here," says Marker, "we are talking about saving an entire ecosystem. We can save the world...
...reading. Its conclusions are divided into assessments of five major types of ecosystems--forests, freshwater systems, coastal/marine habitats, grasslands and agricultural lands--and all five are showing signs of deterioration (see the graphics on these pages). The report's maps and charts capture the stunning scale and character of human impact on the planet. One set reveals the degree to which agricultural lands have been degraded around the world by the buildup of salts and the loss of nutrients; another locates oceanic dead zones caused by pollutants flowing to the sea from rivers; another shows the degree to which productive...
...answer lies in a paradox. No one argues that life on Earth would be possible without ecosystems, but the entire march of human progress has occurred against a backdrop of landscapes transformed from their natural state to suit the needs of agriculture and industry. Various societies have degraded huge areas without suffering dire consequences. In the U.S., pioneers plowed up almost the entire prairie on the nation's way to becoming an agricultural and economic colossus, but America lost what may have been the greatest concentration of animal life on the planet. Britain, Japan, Korea and Thailand are among...
Anyone who has taken a general-science course knows that Earth's most important elements move in cycles, circulating from sky to land and sea and back again. The human presence has become so dominant that we have disrupted even these most basic mechanisms of the planet. Most familiar, of course, is what we have done to the carbon cycle. Because we are pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than land and seas can reabsorb it, the accumulating gas is trapping heat and upsetting the climate. The result is not only rising seas and fiercer storms but also...
Even more devastating is what we've done to the water cycle. So large is human demand for freshwater that many great rivers like the Yellow in China and even the Nile in Egypt sometimes dry up before getting to the sea. When diverted water is returned to waterways, it often comes back laden with noxious chemicals and sewage. Moreover, the building of 40,000 large dams and many more smaller obstructions has converted most of the world's rivers into a series of interconnected lakes. Such a water system, like nothing seen since the end of the last...