Thanks to rampant poaching and habitat destruction, rhinos have the unfortunate distinction of being one of the most endangered animals on earth.
Over the last 30 years, the world’s overall rhinoceros population has declined by over 90% - and if not for dedicated conservation efforts over the last 100 years, it is likely that all rhinoceros species would already be extinct.
To help raise awareness for these proud pachyderms, here are 11 incredible facts about rhinos - plus a compilation of beautiful photos (except for one very graphic photo) and a couple of videos, too. Enjoy!
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.
The video is explicit, the message is simple: You can transform lives in one of the poorest districts of India by donating a goat.
A life-changing experience in India inspired volunteer Debbie Glasband to launch a program to provide an alternative source of income for tribal people: Goats.
United States (and EU) have objected to the principles of Kyoto Protocol and demand that developing countries should also accept responsibility to reduce carbon emissions by accepting mandatory emission targets.
A bill mandating energy usage and new energy efficiency measures for more than 700 energy intensive industrial units will be tabled in the Indian Parliament in November.
Officials from elephant range states are meeting in Delhi this week in hopes of finding a solution to the growing number of elephant killings in India.
Loss of habitat leading to an increase of conflicts between elephants and humans, combined with the invasion of poachers into government-protected zones, are resulting in an unacceptable increase in elephant deaths in India.
To address this issue, officials from India’s elephant range states are gathering in Delhi this week.
The developed countries are struggling to build national consensus for ambitious mitigation measures while the developing countries have gained the higher ground in the negotiations for the next climate deal by announcing voluntary sectoral emission reduction targets.
In an effort to help a major developing country (the 4th largest country in the world) deal with climate change appropriately, the new Prime Minister of Japan reportedly agreed to give Indonesia a $400 million loan for this last weekend.
With so much going on at the international front the Indian government has struggled to chalk out official negotiations plan for the Copenhagen Summit. It must now decide if it wants to be a deal breaker or a major initiator at the climate talks.
