Eye: Global Warming | New Tesla Electric Battery | Elephant Slaughter

GreenTracker

The UN’s latest report on climate change is terrifying Grist

From The New York Times:

The world may already be nearing a temperature at which the loss of the vast ice sheet covering Greenland would become inevitable, the report said. The actual melting would then take centuries, but it would be unstoppable and could result in a sea level rise of 23 feet, with additional increases from other sources like melting Antarctic ice, potentially flooding the world’s major cities.

We Are On The Verge Of An Electric Car Battery Breakthrough Think Progress

Having opened up its electric car technology patents to the rest of the auto industry, Tesla Motors is on the verge of achieving a cost-effective electric car.

Daniel Sparks at Motley Fool is reporting that the company is on the right track towards developing a battery that costs only $100 per kilowatt-hour — a cost widely believed to be the threshold where electric vehicles can finally be cost-competitive.

Tesla has plans to build an enormous $5 billion battery manufacturing plant with 6,500 workers. The very successful car manufacturer has placed a construction pad in Nevada but says it may to something similar in one or two other states before negotiations with state governments for incentives around a final decision of plant location.

Bill would cap income eligibility for state’s clean-vehicle rebates LA Times

A family of four with an annual household income of $53,000, for example, could bundle state incentives toward the purchase of a cleaner vehicle. They could get $1,500 for retiring a high-polluting vehicle, along with the existing $2,500 rebate for buying an electric car.

The family would also qualify for an additional $3,000 incentive for a clean air vehicle, specifically for low-income buyers. The incentive could be even larger for a buyer who lives in a neighborhood with poor air quality.

Alternately, residents could simply retire an older car, without buying a new one, and get $3,000 to pay for a public transit pass or car-sharing program membership.

Soaring Meat Production Threatens Global Environment, Warns Report BloombertBusinessweek

Raising all that livestock requires lots of land and water. More than two-thirds of all agricultural land is used for animal pasture, with an additional 10 percent used to grow feed grains consumed by meat- and dairy-producing animals. Agriculture overall consumes about 70 percent of the world’s fresh water; a third of it goes to grow feed grain. Particularly resource-intensive is beef production: Raising cattle requires up to five times as much land as that needing to produce pigs or chickens—for the same amount of protein.

GlamTribale

100,000 Elephants Killed by Poachers in Just Three Years, Landmark Analysis Finds National Geographic

AOC and GlamTribale Welcome Foster Elephant ROROGOI and The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust AOC GlamaTribale

Situated in a corner of Nairobi National Park, the elephant orphange is open every morning for an hour. Tourists from around the globe arrive to watch the orphans, aged up to three years playing in the mud and drinking bottles of milk. Elephants are milk-dependent until the age of three and would die in the wild without intervention from groups like DSWT.

Many of the orphans have had dramatic rescues and they are often traumatized from their loss. Our own ROROGOI had been on her own for over a month before her rescue.   . Each baby elephant has its own stockade where they sleep with a keeper staying the night. A staff rotation is maintained so that the elephants don’t attach themselves too emotionally to one person.