540
Chelley in Arizona. These gorgeous cliffs had been inhabited for 5000 years, its
elaborate, multi-story dwellings erected over time by the Ancestral Puebloan peoples known as Anasazi, beginning around 700 CE. But by the fourteenth century, the
buildup of unsanitary waste might have spawned disease outbreaks, in concert with
a thousand-year drought and famine: a combination of ecological ill effects forcing
the inhabitants out toward the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico.
In places like Borneo—third largest, and among the most biologically diverse
islands in the world—the rampant extraction of “timber, palm oil, pulp, rubber and
minerals” has wiped out, to date, half of her forests (“21.5 million hectares” “lost
between 2007 and 2020”—forests replaced by wastelands of stump and strewn
industrial wastes).
13
In the United States, “85 percent of parks have air that is
unhealthy to breathe,” while “96 percent of the United States’ 416 national park
units have significant air quality issues.”
14
According to the Pew Charitable Trusts,
“as much as 13 million metric tons of plastic ends up in the ocean each year.”
15
13 See “Borneo Deforestation,” n.a., World Wildlife Fund, 2020, https://wwf.panda.org/our_work/
forests/deforestation_fronts2/deforestation_in_borneo_and_sumatra/. Accessed May 30, 2020.
14 See “Significant Air Pollution Plagues Almost All U.S. National Parks,” by Jason Daley,
Smithsonian Magazine, May 9, 2019, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/signficantair-pollution-plagues-almost-all-us-national-parks-180972141/. Accessed May 30, 2020.
15 “Plastic Pollution Affects Sea Life Throughout Ocean,” by Simon Reddy, September 14, 2018,
PEW, https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2018/09/24/plastic-pollutionaffects-sea-life-throughout-the-ocean, Accessed May 30, 2020.
Fig. 57.2 Jomolhari (7326 m/24035 ft), climbed six times, beginning in 1937, until all mountaineering on sacred peaks was banned in Bhutan in the early twenty-first century. (Photo ©
M.C. Tobias)
57 The Geography of Contradiction
Chelley in Arizona. These gorgeous cliffs had been inhabited for 5000 years, its
elaborate, multi-story dwellings erected over time by the Ancestral Puebloan peoples known as Anasazi, beginning around 700 CE. But by the fourteenth century, the
buildup of unsanitary waste might have spawned disease outbreaks, in concert with
a thousand-year drought and famine: a combination of ecological ill effects forcing
the inhabitants out toward the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico.
In places like Borneo—third largest, and among the most biologically diverse
islands in the world—the rampant extraction of “timber, palm oil, pulp, rubber and
minerals” has wiped out, to date, half of her forests (“21.5 million hectares” “lost
between 2007 and 2020”—forests replaced by wastelands of stump and strewn
industrial wastes).
13
In the United States, “85 percent of parks have air that is
unhealthy to breathe,” while “96 percent of the United States’ 416 national park
units have significant air quality issues.”
14
According to the Pew Charitable Trusts,
“as much as 13 million metric tons of plastic ends up in the ocean each year.”
15
13 See “Borneo Deforestation,” n.a., World Wildlife Fund, 2020, https://wwf.panda.org/our_work/
forests/deforestation_fronts2/deforestation_in_borneo_and_sumatra/. Accessed May 30, 2020.
14 See “Significant Air Pollution Plagues Almost All U.S. National Parks,” by Jason Daley,
Smithsonian Magazine, May 9, 2019, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/signficantair-pollution-plagues-almost-all-us-national-parks-180972141/. Accessed May 30, 2020.
15 “Plastic Pollution Affects Sea Life Throughout Ocean,” by Simon Reddy, September 14, 2018,
PEW, https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2018/09/24/plastic-pollutionaffects-sea-life-throughout-the-ocean, Accessed May 30, 2020.
Fig. 57.2 Jomolhari (7326 m/24035 ft), climbed six times, beginning in 1937, until all mountaineering on sacred peaks was banned in Bhutan in the early twenty-first century. (Photo ©
M.C. Tobias)
57 The Geography of Contradiction