The world is becoming even more unstable for many of the world’s poorest nations and peoples. A report from Hanoi, Vietnam carried by the New York Times News Service, warns that rising prices, coupled with a growing fear of scarcity, has induced some of the largest rice producers to either announce severe limits on the amount of rice they export, or to ban rice exports entirely.
Nearly half the world’s population depends on rice as a staple. The rising prices have cut into the already constrained budgets of many of the poor in Asia and Pakistan and food riots have broken out during recent months in Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. Prices are also going up in the United States, which imports more than 30% of its rice.
Cambodia, Vietnam, and India have all banned rice exports to a varying degree. Vietnam announced that it would cut rice exports by a quarter on the grounds that it needed to keep more rice within its borders to reduce public discontent. On the same day India banned export of all but the most expensive grade of rice. Egypt pre-empted these announcements by a day, stating that it would not be exporting rice for six months, starting April 1st.
The rise in prices has been caused by droughts and poor weather in Australia and other areas, as well as increased affluence in both India and China, which translates into more people buying more rice. In addition, many farmers who have grown rice in the past are now planting more profitable cash crops, leaving the poor without an affordable food source. Is this situation a sign of things to come for all of us?
The writer displays the common misconception that taking action against climate change can be done without impacting our lifestyles. It is our wasteful and uncaring lifestyles that have ruined the earth and the climate in the first place. Dealing with it now, when the problem is dangerous and entrenched, is going to have an overwhelming impact on everyone’s life. It can only be hoped that projects such as Earth Hour alert enough people, fast enough, that we will be able and willing to undertake the lifestyle changes needed to save the planet.
Scientists have solved a long-standing puzzle regarding the town of Kofels in the Austrian Alps. For many years scholars have suspected that the geography around the city was shaped by an asteroid, but lacked the means to prove it. Now, with the deciphering of a prehistoric clay tablet found 150 years ago in the royal palace at Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire, the question can be answered. The tablet is covered with cuneiform writing used by the ancient Sumerians, and scientists Alan Bond and Mark Hempsell told the 'Daily Telegraph' in London that the tablet is actually a Sumerian astronomer’s notebook . The symbols relate the trajectory of a large object travelling across the constellation of Pisces 5,000 years ago. The projected landing of this object was, to within one degree, in the area surrounding the town of Kofels.
