Govt 401 Pictures

P I C T U R E S

Please click on NASA images with active links to be transported to each site for more information and pictures

No nation on Earth, no matter how powerful, can separate its fate from the fate of the planet (closing caption in the HBO movie “Earth and the American Dream)

Place: Rwanda Photographer: Deriaz, D. Rights: UNESCO

“Not only have we failed to realize we are all one people but we have nowhere else to go” (Jacques Cousteau, French Oceanographer)

Place: Ethiopia, Photographer: Bisson, B., Rights: UNESCO

“No man who has gone to the moon has come back without having acquired what I call instant global consciousness. He does not like the way things are and he wants to change them” (American Astronaut Edgar Mitchell quoted in Human Politics in the Global Interest by Melvin Gurtov)

Place: Mali, Photographer: Roger, Dominique, Rights: UNESCO

“It shames me to say so, but some days all I can give my children is a cup of coffee” (Brazilian scratch farmer in an area of Brazil repeatedly hit by drought and where endemic malnutrition has resulted in widespread dwarfism among the population”

Arctic Ozone Levels (blue area) Significantly Low
During the preceding winter Arctic ozone levels reached their lowest point in eight years at an altitude of nearly 60,000 feet. Concentrations dropped more than 50 percent from their average. On the lookout for expected chlorine level declines due to the Montreal Protocol and what will likely be increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the coming decades. (The Ozone layer, a very rare species –three parts per 10 million --, enables life to survive on the surface of the planet by offering protection against the sun’s ultraviolet radiation).

“This is our home, the Miracle Planet, we must treasure it and protect it” (PBS Nova Series “The Miracle Planet”)

Central America from Space
SeaWiFS captured these images of wildfires sparked by ongoing hot and dry weather on March 30 in Guatemala's Olintepueque and La Esperanza regions (left) and March 29 view of the smoke coming from Central America (right). In this oblique westward-looking view, Honduras and Nicaragua are in the foreground and El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico are in the background.

Floods Ravage Mozambique (seen in these before and after pictures of the region captured by Landsat)
mozambiquebefore.jpg (12383 bytes)

Saharan Dust Plume as Big as Spain
A massive sandstorm blowing off the northwest African desert has blanketed hundreds of thousands of square miles of the eastern Atlantic Ocean with a dense cloud of sand. Please click on the image above for a movie of the dust storm.

Atlanta --Day Heat (White is hottest and red closely behind).

Urban Sprawl Reduces Annual Photosynthetic Production. Hotlanta It Is! (Details).

Place: Morocco, Photographer: Roger, Dominique Place: Sao Paolo, Photographer:
Rights: UNESCO Tochtermann, W Rights: UNESCO

Family Planning in Tunisia (left) and the Philippines (right)

Both photographs by: Dominique Roger, Rights: UNESCO

If the rate of a nation’s population growth is at 1% per year, its population will double in 69 years. A 2% growth means the doubling of the population in 34 and one half years, and so on. While the Global North part of the planet (advanced industrial nations) experiences 1% or less (or even negative) growth, the Global South (poor nations least able to afford population growth) experiences rates above 1 %.

Place: Brazil, Photographer: Fury, Thomas Place: Bangladesh, Photographer: Mohr, Jean

Place: Florence, Italy, Photographer: Roger, Dominique, Rights: UNESCO

“We have achieved a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But we must stop thinking of ourselves as conquerors because ultimately a war against nature is a war against ourselves” (Rachel Carson, Marine Biologist)