Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years

And human actions have already changed the global nitrogen cycle much more than carbon cycling, and the ultimate consequences of this multifaceted change may be even more intractable than dealing with excessive CO2.

Deaths among adults raise this to at least 1.7 million fatalities per year.

A second remarkable saltation took place during the 1930s and 1940s with the introduction of gas turbines, nuclear fission, electronic computing, semiconductors, key plastics, insecticides, and herbicides

the annual cost of safeguarding the world's biodiversity at about $17 billion added to the inadequate $6 billion spent currently. Needed are adequate budgets for already protected areas and the purchase of additional land in order to extend coverage to a minimum standard of 10% of area in every major biodiversity region. Total cost would be equival

A conservative estimate for the year 2050 would put at least 60 countries, with nearly half the world's population, into the water-scarce and water-stressed categories. Only the installation of the most efficient irrigation systems as well as near-complete recycling of urban and industrial water could ease the deficits, but even so there will be a

A higher sea level would not only encroach directly on existing infrastructures but also accelerate the rates of coastal erosion, increase the damage due to storm surges, and contaminate coastal aquifers with salt water.

Second, the gasoline-fueled internal combustion engine, the most important transportation prime mover of the modern world, was first deployed (based on older stationary models) during the same decade as the Parsons machine, and it reached a remarkable maturity in a single generation after its introduction.

Human interference in the global water cycle is a source of more imminent problems and already a major cause of large-scale premature mortality.

Many of these events represent much lower dangers and have less profound and long-lasting consequences from the view point of national stability, economic damage, and standard of living than do many voluntary risk exposures (drinking, driving, smoking, overeating) and deliberate yet deleterious policy actions (enormous budget and trade deficits, wa