"The mid-1960s witnessed the climax of the postwar global economic expansion. Whether measured by mounting raw-material, agricultural, and manufacturing production, or by high employment and consumption levels, the growth between 1945 and 1965 had been nearly universal. Primary-producer countries had also shared in this prosperity, increasing their annual gross domestic product by at least 4 percent in the 1950s. In the 1960s—which the United Nations designated the First Development Decade—this figure rose to 5 percent and was even higher in the oil-producing countries. The Green Revolution in agriculture (the application of technology, including irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides, and disease-resistant, high-yield crop varieties) increased the world’s food supply. But the new global landscape also had darker sides. Increased food yields and improved transportation networks led to steep population growth but also an alarming drop in local production. There were the first warnings of a “Silent Spring”— the threat of industrial chemicals to the natural environment, made vivid in Rachel Carson’s 1962 book by that name. Scientists feared the reduction in biodiversity as a result of applying technology to agriculture. There were also significant economic and social consequences, including a rise in class disparities in the countryside (wealthier farmers were better able to acquire loans and information, and men had easier access to credit than women), the delay or cancellation of land-distribution programs, and the mass migrations of rural people to Third World cities that lacked houses, jobs, schools, medical facilities, and social services for the new arrivals. By the mid-1960s the Superpowers were experiencing the limits of their economic strength. The vast US and Soviet expenditures on their conventional and nuclear forces, ambitious space programs, and expanding weaponry deliveries to their allies and overseas clients increasingly diverted capital from civilian investment—particularly from education, social services, public health, and infrastructure projects such as mass transportation—and promoted inflation (which the Soviets were better able to hide), leading to the erosion of the quality of public life in both the West and the East."