The 1990's were described as a "map-maker's nightmare". Political changes swept the globe --Germany reunited, Poland freed itself of Soviet occupation and a communist regime. The USSR collapsed from within and was replaced by 15 new countries. Ancient ethnic rivalries emerged, splintering Yugoslavia into five nations as Eastern Orthodox Serbs battled Slovenes, Muslim "Slavs, and Roman Catholic Croats. Greater changes in the political orders had not been seen at any other time in history.

In Iraq, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in a 43-day war in which it was repulsed by a coalition armed by the U.S. The repeal of apartheit in South Africa led to changes in the 2d largest continent. A 12-year war in El Salvador ended and Bolivia made the world's first debt-for-nature swap.

Chile is wedged between the deepest ocean and the longest mountain chain, with the driest desert on earth in the mineral-rich Atacama. The longest period of political stability and civil liberty in Latin America, was ended in 1973 by a bloody coup against Salvador Allende's government. After 16 years of under the heel of dictator Pinochet, democracy was restored in 1989.

The Falkland Islands erupted into a war in 1982 when an Argentine dictatorship invaded the British crown colony. South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, once part of the Falkland group, are now separate British dependencies.

Geophysically, detection instruments, satellite imagery, and the unifying theory of plate tectonics, have enabled us to record and even predict earthquakes and vulcanism of a dynamic planet being probed from crust to core. This atlas includes computer-generated tomographic views of the interior, as well as cosmological maps of outer space, and maps of the ocean floor produced with high-frequency high-resolution sonar. The detail of the Mid-Ocean Ridge is breath-taking.

The world's deepest borehole is in Russia, exceeding 12 kilometers. Study of supercontinental cycles has contributed to an understanding of global climate change. The charts show precipitation and temperature data in climatological parallels. The maps visually make the case in support of the observation that the "human species has precipitated the sixth great biological decline" and we verge on an extinction threshhold. "Humanity is squandering the capital bequethed by billions of years of evolution".

Don't let anyone tell you that it is "capitalism" that profits by stealing non-renewable resources while shifting the depleted burdens to the public. That's not productive capitalism, it is criminal and suicidal idiocy.

In an essay by E.O. Wilson entitled "Habitable Earth", which accompanies a Landsat picture of the disaster in Rondonia, the author expresses optimism: "Much of the technology has already been invented for cleaning air and water, shifting to alternative energy sources, and linking conservation and development." [5] We only need a committment to the environment and demographic restraint to that our descendants will have a fit world to live in.

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