[106] Foreign Aid

Foreign aid does not just go to individual countries; entire regions often suffer conditions making them needy and susceptible to foreign aid.

[96] Names

[80] Acid Rain

Acid rain is primarily caused by sulfur and nitrogen compounds that are released by factories, cars, and especially coal power plats. The emission can be carried hundreds of kilometers to effecting ecosystems in other countries. Acid rain has harmful effects on plants, aquatic animals, and infrastructure.

[78] People Power

The scale of regions reflects the size of population.

[67] Land Mines

Red indicates countries where mines are in use; countries identified with the letter "M" are major producers of land mines.

[65] UN Peacekeeping Missions

Beginning with the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization Mission to the Middle East in 1948, the UN has undertaken more than 56 peacekeeping missions across the world, with varying degrees of success. In 2003 14 missions were current. Almost 2000 peacekeepers lost their lives since 1948.

[63] Population Distribution

The world's 6 billion+ people are by no means spread out equally over the globe's territories — yet continental lines are easily identifiable since people seem to prefer coastal regions for settlements. More than half of the world's population lives on a relatively small territory spreading from northern India to China.

[59-6] Rain Forest Leftovers

Rain Forest Depletion: green indicates where rain forests still exist - red where it has perished.

[56] Percentage of World Energy Consumption and Population

Numerical percentages of world energy consumption are correlated with bar graphs indicating population figures. Japan, for instance, consumes 15 times more energy per capita than China, and the United States uses 2.5 times more energy per capita than Japan.

[45] Wittgenstein

The opening sentence of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus. "Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist" ("The world is everything that is the case").

[43] Population Bubble

The question will not be what, but how to feed a population that will exceed 10 billion in the next century. Since 1985, due to agricultural engineering advances, the earth has yielded more food than we can possibly consume - yet geopolitical structures continue to leave millions of people dying of starvation.

[41] Night

The military objectives of the US Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program have created an aesthetic byproduct — a composite photo of the planet, taken during nighttime hours. More than 99% of these representations of actual light sources are indications of human activity on the planet. For example, this image includes more than a million man-made fires, most of them in the Third World, chiefly propagated for agricultural purposes. Population centers are easily identified; however, the amount of light represented here is not necessarily proportional to the population size. Imbalances arise due to unequal electrical consumption. Japanese consume 15 times as much electricity as Chinese per capita, and Americans consume 21/2 times more than Japanese do. This image also illustrates light pollution, a condition only astronomers have complained about so far.

[30] CO2 Spiral

Between 1950 and 1986, annual carbon dioxide emissions have tripled. The principal source of these emissions is fossil fuel combustion, but natural gas flaring and cement production also contributes to the rising level. Carbon dioxide is the major cause of the Greenhouse Effect.

[29-3] Ozone Hole

A second permanent ozone hole was detected in the area of the North Pole in 1990, producing radical meteorological changes in parts of the Northern Hemisphere. In 1996, the World Meteorological Organization (UNO) measured the Southern Ozone Hole to be the size of the US and Canada combined. They are expected to increase in size until 2020.

[29-2] Ozone Hole 2000

[29] Ozone Hole 1990

A second permanent ozone hole was detected in the area of the North Pole in 1990, producing radical meteorological changes in parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Data shown here indicate areas and intensity of ozone depletion during a 10-year period in the 1980s.
(CMYK IMAGE MISREPRESENTS COLORS)