Green Options

For the first time, the United States has agreed to recognize the national mitigation measures proposed by the developing countries in the proposed climate treaty.

This is a followup post that will attempt to address some additional, wide-spread myths about the commercial sale of seed.  In this case the topic with be “GMO” seed improved through genetic engineering (an industry that is now 13 years old and which has been planted on well over 2 billion acres cumulatively, much of it in the developing world). As someone with substantial direct experience with this industry over the years, I’d like to try to speak to some distorted perspectives on this technology.

The First Biotech Crops

The four earliest commercial biotech crops commercialized in 1995/1996 were squash (virus resistant), corn (insect resistant), potatoes (insect resistant), and soybeans (herbicide tolerant). For the squash, corn and potatoes, commercialization was straight forward because it was already standard practice for farmers to buy new seed (tuber seed pieces in the case of potatoes) each year.

For soybeans there was a major commercialization challenge.  There was no question that the new technology was valuable — it would displace millions of pounds and hundreds of millions of dollars of herbicide sales.  It would also greatly increase the efficiency and convenience of producing soybeans. The challenge was that it was standard practice at the time for farmers to save-back some of their crop to use as seed the next year - more in some geographies than others.  If this practice were to continue with the new herbicide tolerant soybeans, it would have been very difficult for the company to recover its high risk investment in the new technology. Growers would simply buy seeds the first year, and then be set until they wanted to buy a new variety. This is not so different from the challenge that record labels with illegal file sharing via the internet.

The two standard solutions that most expected were either (a) charge enough upfront to make up for pervasive seed savings, or (b) raise the price of the herbicide to recover the genetic investment in that way. The first would have discouraged adoption; the second would have disrupted other crops and uses that also depended on the product. Instead, Monsanto tried something completely new (at least to the seed industry). They decided to charge a “technology fee” (”Tech Fee”) of a few $/bag and ask the farmers to sign a license agreement saying they would not save seed.  This was a pretty radical step at the time.  Monsanto also licensed the technology to many other seed companies and they too had to get growers to sign the licenses.

Water scarcity resulting from climate change is the number one issue the world will have to grapple with in the future, according to chief climate scientist and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri.

On the one hand, we will have more water around us with sea level rising. On the other hand, though, drought caused by climate change will leave possibly billions of people without clean water.

This will cause great health and global security issues. Most of these problems will be caused by water imbalances.

You can now explore the Amazon, Madagascar, and Sebangau National Forest in Borneo through Google Earth.

On September 25, I wrote about a Google Earth tour (narrated by AL Gore) and new Google Earth tools and layers which help people to look at the possible effects of climate change under three different scenarios. Now, three new tours have been launched that allow the exploration of critical rainforests and real-life success stories.

The tours (embedded below) have a great wealth of information and inspirational stories bound into succinct Google Earth or YouTube videos.

“The United States is in a sense climate illiterate still,” Hans Schellnhuber, the director of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said earlier this week.

He wasn’t just comparing the US to the EU, however. Even developing nations seem to know more about the issue and the potential results of inaction.

Last month, I wrote about the world’s largest leather exporter leaving the Amazon. This week there is even bigger news. The world’s largest meat exporter is leaving.

After playing leader in global climate change negotiations, United States is now under pressure to respond to India and China’s announcements of mitigation measures.

A new report by Maplecroft, a world leader in global risk assesment, lists the countries at the greatest and the least risk of climate change problems.

The new study examined 166 countries in total. With climate change, it is hard to guess who will be hit the worst, but here is one scientific attempt at ranking the countries’ vulnerability to climate change.

Yesterday, marking the 100-day countdown to the world-changing climate change conference in Copenhagen, Greenpeace presented beautiful ice sculptures in China and India to “to symbolise the ‘disappearing future‘ for the 1.3 billion people in Asia at risk of water shortage as a result of climate change” and “to show ‘the world washed away’ by glacial melts. They also engaged in several other creative demonstrations around the world to encourage climate action in Copenhagen in December.

Is Al Costa pulling our leg? The CEO of Delaware-based Alkol Inc. says he has a system that will convert your car to run on E85 in about an hour.

“Flexing” your vehicle with the Alkol conversion system will allow you to use one of those high-ethanol pumps, which contain a mix of 85 percent ethanol, as opposed to the normal 10 percent mix in conventional gasoline. You won’t need a brand new shiny vehicle with one of those “Flex Fuel” badges either.

How does it work? Does it work? Is it like one of those quick-fix radiator sealer bottles that high school kids used to pour into their old jalopies?

The U.S position on Climate Change is overshadowing all other discussions in the lead up to Copenhagen, even at a conference I recently attended in Melbourne Australia - the 5th Australia-New Zealand Climate Change & Business Conference, August 24-26th. The Australian position requires global consensus for a greenhouse gas emissions target by 25% with a successful Post 2012 Agreement in place, but only 5% if that is not concluded. It all depends on what the U.S does in Copenhagen according to their minister Penny Wong.

The European Union is the only group that will continue with strong commitments independent of the U.S position with a 20% reduction of greenhouse gases on 1990 levels by 2020 and 30% if a global agreement is concluded.