Skip to main content

Currently Skimming:

2 Perspective
Pages 23-34

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.


From page 23...
... Dwindling world food stockpiles in the early 1970s helped stimulate the application of new agricultural technologies to increase food production; this response has been called the "Green Revolution." Within a decade, the 23
From page 24...
... The continued rapid growth of cities raises questions about the loss of arable farmland to urban spread, about the effects of municipal wastes and industrial pollutants on land and water resources, and about competing demands on and overuse of water supplies. Irrigation can create arable land and increase food production in the short term, but it entails potential long-term damaging effects related to salt buildup and water-logged soils.
From page 25...
... To observe, understand, predict, and-where appropriate reverse the potentially dangerous aspects of global change requires an unprecedented international effort involving scientists in many disciplines, leaders of public and private sectors, and all the peoples of the world. We Have Enormous Waste Problems.
From page 26...
... Human activity threatens to cause the extinction of hundreds of thousands of species during the next century unless strong preventive action is taken. Although we do not know why frog populations are declining and even disappearing all over the world or why migrating bird populations in the eastern United States have declined at rates as high as 5% per year over the last 15 years, enough is known to make human activity a prime suspect.
From page 27...
... Environmental regulations cost an estimated $115 billion in 1990, or about 2% of the GNP; compliance with the Clean Air Act alone costs approximately $32 billion a year (Abelson, 1993; CEQ, 1991; EPA, 1990a)
From page 28...
... Those slow changes cause sudden changes in environmental variables that directly affect people's health, productivity of renewable resources, and vitality of societies. Examples of such problems are global climate change and the accelerating loss of biological diversity.
From page 29...
... Investment in agricultural research has been estimated to yield a return of 15-40% per year in improved human abilities to harvest food and fiber from land under cultivation. The engineering studies that made it possible to build sewage collection and treatment facilities opened the path to drastic decreases in waterborne infectious disease.
From page 30...
... These tools give us a picture of discontinuous behavior, of multiple stable states, and of interactions between slow processes that accumulate natural resources and fast processes that mediate ecological goods and services. Not only can we characterize the problems, but we now have the concepts and methods to begin to deal with them.
From page 31...
... The way in which environmental policies emerged in the federal government has strongly influenced the organization, character, and effectiveness of the research that is conducted and how it is used to solve environmental problems. The nation's environmental efforts are not organized in any comprehensive way, and fragmented efforts cannot surmount the impediments to achieving the full benefit of research, including reduction of the enormous costs outlined above.
From page 32...
... At the same time, one must recognize that mission agencies perform a necessary research function. Agencies focusing on basic research are unlikely to provide relevant information for pressing management problems that mission agencies must address.
From page 33...
... For example, although national and international action came relatively soon after the Antarctic ozone hole was discovered in 1986, the scientific concerns expressed a decade earlier (Molina and Rowland, 1974) were largely ignored by governments until the hole appeared.
From page 34...
... Indeed, engineering solutions are not likely to be feasible, so understanding of how to induce changes in human behavior must supplement engineering in the search for solutions to problems. Even if scientific methods and information are available, the effort to seek or implement solutions might not be forthcoming, especially if there is residual scientific uncertainty or if the solutions are potentially costly.


This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More information on Chapter Skim is available.