Im Verlauf der gesamten 80er Jahre seien lediglich Schäden in Höhe von 55 Milliarden Dollar durch Naturkatastrophen entstanden. Die schlimmsten Auswirkungen hatte der erst kürzlich über Mittelamerika tobende Hurrikan "Mitch". Allein "Mitch" habe nach gegenwärtigen Schätzungen in den Ländern Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala und El Salvador mindestens 11'000 Menschen in den Tod gerissen.

Rein finanziell gesehen, schlagen in diesem Jahr die Überschwemmungen am Jangtse-Fluß in China mit Schäden in Höhe von 30 Milliarden Dollar zu Buche. Mindestens 3'700 Menschen seien in den Fluten umgekommen, 223 Millionen Menschen hätten ihr Dach über dem Kopf verloren. Bangladesch sei 1998 Opfer der schlimmsten Überschwemmungen in dem Land seit 100 Jahren geworden. 30 Millionen Menschen seien obdachlos.

Zum Teil seien die Menschen selbst schuld: So habe die Abholzung der Wälder maßgeblich zur Verschlimmerung der Naturereignisse beigetragen.

Within the next 24 hours, as we go about our daily lives, 54 species of animals and plants will disappear forever- at least 20,000 species a year are lost as the rain forests of the world are destroyed. Yet it is chilling to realize that people are converting the richest ecosystem on Earth into a pasture for cows.

The rainforest generate 40% of the world's oxygen and one out of every four pharmaceutical drug comes from the rainforest. Yet there are thousands of species that haven't been examined (or even discovered) and whose properties have yet to be examined.

The dread possibility of a treeless Amazon is now becoming real. Altogether, an estimated 14 percent of the original Amazonian rainforest has been destroyed.

North Americans are the most wasteful people on the face of the Earth. In Rome, people put out a little over 680 grams (1.5 lb.) of trash a day; in Nigeria, it's about 450 grams (1 lb). In North America, every day, each person throws out almost 1800 grams (4 lb.) of waste. Over the course of a year, that's almost a ton of garbage a person.

A typical North American goes through and discards 7 kilograms (16 lb.) of junk mail and 54 kilograms (120 lb.) of newsprint each year. Each day, North Americans use hundreds of thousands of plastic tampon holders. Each hour, we throw away more than 2.5 million non-returnable, non-recyclable plastic bottles.

We have created a world where time is money, convenience profitable. We put our babies in disposable diapers, enough of them each year to stretch to the moon and back seven times. Worldwide, one billion trees annually are cut down for those fluffy lines in disposables. Every hour of work saved by a disposable diaper translates into hundreds of years of waste. Modern life is a garbage maker's perpetual-motion machine: every year 1.6 billion pens, two billion razors and blades, and 246.9 million scrap tires are discarded; and every three months, Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild the entire U.S. commercial airline fleet. In the United States, more than half the paper and glass produced and about one-third of the plastics are incorporated in items with a lifespan of under one year.

Breaking the garbage habit means destroying the cultural myths we have created as a society - myths that have allowed us to define ourselves by our possessions, that have led us to canonize time and convenience. The basic tenets of the consumer society are that nature is infinite and exists to serve us, and that constant demand and, therefore, constant growth is good. To keep the post-Second World War economy buoyant, an entire value system was contrived to "stimulate consumption." Disposability is profitability; items must be designed specifically to be used only once or a few times and then thrown away.

More than 400 million vehicles clog the world's streets today, and the production and use of fuels for automobiles accounts for an estimated 17 percent of all carbon dioxide released from fossil fuels. In one year, the average North American car gives off its own weight in carbon; as much carbon as it would take 20 hectares (49 acres) of forest cover to absorb - and all that is adding to global warming.

The electricity used for all [the] lighting [in North America] alone could be cut by 50 percent by replacing normal light bulbs with modern compact fluorescent ones. These bulbs are more expensive, but produce only one-sixth of the carbon dioxide (in terms of energy consumption) of standard light bulbs. An 18-watt screw-in fluorescent bulb produces as much light as a 75-watt incandescent bulb and has a 75000-hour lifetime, 10 times that of an incandescent bulb. Each compact bulb will reduce carbon dioxide emissions from a typical coal-fired power plant by one ton over the bulb's lifetime.

Worldwatch figures indicate that commercial buildings could reduce their electricity use for lighting by as much as 75 percent by using similar bulbs and current regulators. The saving add up in concrete terms to the elimination of 40 power plants.

• Half a billion hectares of African land are moderately to severely degraded.
• African forests are the most depleted of all the tropical regions, with only 30 percent of historical stands remaining.
• African savannahs are the richest grasslands in the world, supporting many indigenous plants and animals, including the world's greatest concentration of large mammals.
• Africa has 19 of the 25 countries that have the highest percentage of populations without access to drinking water.
• For many countries, particularly in West Africa, fish is the main source of protein.

Asia and the Pacific

• Asian timber reserves may last for no more than a further 40 years.
• Rapid growth in energy demand has led to a significant increase in air pollution. Acidification is also an emerging problem.
• Some 70 percent of the waste discharged into the Pacific receives no treatment.
• The disposal of liquid and solid wastes is increasingly problematic in a region with such high population density.
• The largest portion of the world's land affected by soil degradation is in Asia and the Pacific.

Asia, West

• West Asia lost 11 percent of its remaining natural forest during the 1980s.
• Many countries in West Asia suffer from water scarcity, with Bahrain having less than 18 percent of the minimum threshold; yet, levels of water consumption are now very high, ranging from 300 to 1,500 litres a day per capita.
• Some 1.2 million barrels of oil are spilled into the Persian Gulf annually.
• The region's coastal zone, an invaluable economic resource for development and tourism, is one of the most fragile and endangered ecosystems in the world.

Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States

• Emissions of sulphur and nitrogen oxides are largely responsible for the 30–50 percent of the forests that are damaged or dying in Central and Eastern Europe.
• Europe has added 10 million hectares of protected areas since 1982, but 52 percent of its fish, 45 percent of its reptiles, and 42 percent of its mammals are under threat.
• Groundwater is overexploited near 60 percent of Europe's industrial and urban centers.
• Europe contributes 36 percent of world chlorofluorocarbon emissions, 30 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, and 25 percent of sulphur dioxide emissions; air quality is the top environmental priority for countries in Central and Eastern Europe.
• The average European produces 150 to 600 kilograms of municipal waste a year—but this has led to the adoption of alternative methods of waste disposal, cleaner production technologies, and more recycling.

Latin America

• Five of the 10 most species-rich countries on the world are in Latin America, but biodiversity in the region is highly threatened—with an estimated potential loss of at least 100,000 species from forested areas alone over the next 40 years.
• Some 47 percent of the region's grazing lands have lost their soil fertility as a result of erosion, overgrazing, salinization, and alkalinization.
• Large quantities of agricultural and other contaminants are discharged to streams that flow into the Caribbean, resulting in pollution from phosphorus, nitrates, and pesticides.
• Many Caribbean beaches now have average tar level 10 times higher than those estimated to adversely affect the use of beaches by tourists.
• Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay experience the effects of increased ultraviolet-B radiation due to ozone depletion more acutely than any other inhabited region.

North America

• In 1996 in the United States, 728 species were endangered or threatened; in Canada, 254 species were endangered or threatened, and a further 21 species were already nationally or globally extinct.
• North American households use twice as much water as European households, but pay half as much for it.
• 2.4 million rural Americans are badly in need of a source of safe drinking water; 1 million are without piped water at all; and supplies to a further 5.6 million do not meet safe drinking water standards.
• Declining fish stocks have resulted in the collapse of East Coast fisheries, with a devastating impact on people living in the area, especially in the Canadian Maritime Provinces.
• Throughout North America, urban centers are having increasing problems finding sites for new landfills; as a result, campaigns to save resources, encourage recycling, and separate wastes have led to stricter rules in some communities.

Polar Regions: The Arctic and the Antarctic

• Melting of the Greenland ice sheet has made a positive contribution to the sea-level rise of 10–25 cm. observed over the past 100 years.
• In 1995, the Arctic contained 285 protected areas covering 2.1 million km.
• If the Antarctic ice sheet melted, it would produce a sea-level rise of at least 60 meters.
• The Antarctic ozone hole is expected to remain for many more decades.