Everybody interested in the topic should watch this video (it's just an animated graph, no music). You will get a better intuition for the lifetime of orbital debris, and the impact of various incidents, in a few minutes than in hours of reading.

Wow, what a beautiful video. I really enjoyed trying to figure out what events and phenomena the different shapes/patterns in the diagram represent.

I am generally allergic to video, but that was fascinating to watch. Thanks for sharing it.