3 interesting topics in Parts I and II

1. How the fast food industry has led to the destruction of South and Central American rainforests (pgs 46-47). "According to a 1996 report by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, funded by the World Bank and the United Nations, 72 acres of rainforest are destroyed every minute, mostly by impoverished people working for multinational corporations, who are cutting and burning the forest to create agricultural or pasturelands to grow beef for export to the United States."
2. Global warming caused by the increasing emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and how "the sky is actually falling" (pgs 66-70). "...as Bill McKibben points out so articulately in The End of Nature, the distance between the ground (at sea level) and the upper edge of the troposphere, the part of our atmosphere that supports almost all life on Earth, is only about six miles. That's all that we have above and around us, just those narrow six iles of air, and crowded in and below that is every form of terrestrial life."
3. Contrasting tribes and city-states (pgs 194-200). "About seven thousand years ago, the first politically organized city-states came into being. Since that time, they have systematically exterminated almost all remnants of the tribal cultures they come in contact with. This process of extermination is now nearly complete; this century has seen the extermination of more tribal people than any in history. . . now, however, we're beginning to see the flaws in a city-state organization."