Officials counter that glyphosate, the herbicide involved, is harmless to health, and that the coca industry itself does huge ecological damage.

ECONOMIST: A big new effort to repress the cocaine industry

The risks of hazardous liquid pipeline spills that do lots of ecological damage have also dropped by 5 percent a year.

FORBES: Pipeline Explosion Rattles Natural Gas Industry

The agency said there was no evidence of environmental or ecological damage.

BBC: Dead fish

Lastly, the third challenge is to pose strict limits on the processes of commodification of the environment which are at the root of the ecological damage that affects Latin America today.

UNESCO: Social and Human Sciences

Last year, 20th Century Fox, which made The Beach, incurred the wrath of activists in Thailand who accused the company of causing irreparable ecological damage to Maya Beach on Phi Phi Island during filming.

BBC: Hanks avoids Beach blunders

Our accounting mistake is wreaking ecological and economic damage across the U.S. and the world.

FORBES: Economists Urge Honest Accounting of Carbon's True Costs

Of course, the U.S. has experienced many severe droughts during the past century, including the Dust Bowl that produced major ecological and agricultural damage throughout American and Canadian prairies from 1930-36 (and in some areas, until 1940).

FORBES: He's Baaack!: A Hot New Media Blast From Al Gore