Word: problem
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...huge domestic coal reserves threaten to pump cataclysmic amounts of CO2 into the air over the next century. While scaling fuel cells down to fit inside cars and trucks has been a challenge, scaling them up or linking them together to run factories and power plants should be no problem...
...danger in pulling hydrogen from fossil fuels is that it leaves carbon dioxide behind. If the CO2 is simply vented into the atmosphere, global warming will be as big a problem as ever. There is an alternative though: pump it into the ground. In Norway, for example, the energy company Norsk Hydro is building a power plant that will be fueled with hydrogen drawn from natural gas. The CO2 that's left over will be reinjected into an oil field on the continental shelf. Not only will this take the carbon dioxide out of circulation but it will also pressurize...
...folks inclined to fret that the earth is heading for the environmental abyss, the population problem has always been one of the biggest causes for worry--and with good reason. The last time humanity celebrated a new century there were 1.6 billion people here for the party--or a quarter as many as this time. In 1900 the average life expectancy was, in some places, as low as 23 years; now it's 65, meaning the extra billions are staying around longer and demanding more from the planet. The 130 million or so births registered annually--even after subtracting...
...United Nations got in on the population game, creating the U.N. Population Fund, a global organization dedicated to bringing family-planning techniques to women who would not otherwise have them. In the decades that followed, the U.N. increased its commitment, sponsoring numerous global symposiums to address the population problem further. The most significant was the 1994 Cairo conference, where attendees pledged $5.7 billion to reduce birthrates in the developing world and acknowledged that giving women more education and reproductive freedom was the key to accomplishing that goal. Even a global calamity like aids has yielded unexpected dividends, with international campaigns...
...latest suburbs to bloom in the desert outside Cairo, a city growing so fast that newcomers are taking over rooftops and cemeteries. Cairo (pop. 7.7 million) is the epitome of congestion and sprawl. It's what happens when the human population multiplies and spreads out of control. But the problem of unrestrained growth isn't confined to developing countries with high birthrates. In England, as much land as there is in all of Wales has been converted since 1960 from "areas of tranquillity," as the English say, into malls and suburbs. One of the fastest-growing regions...