Friday, January 11, 2008

Rhinos in Peril

[and our Leave of Absence #2]

It's been almost a year, and we should celebrate it. It's hard to believe it, but up until just one year ago, if you raised the issues of the Environment, Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol, and so on, you were a quaint curiosity with flowers in your hair. Or a Marxist-Leninist SUV hater - or a science-fiction blockbuster - or Sting - or a scientist about to get grilled. We were none of the above -- just old enough to remember Sting – so even as the summer temperatures in our beloved Mediterranean grew more and more inhumane (not inhumane enough to keep us away), we had to keep our worries to ourselves. It looked hopeless.

And then, at the end of January 2007, in Davos, Switzerland, the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum took place. We remember watching the TV reports in amazement. Had we missed something? Certainly those were not Marxist-Leninists with flowers in their hair, not any more anyway, but on and on they went about Climate Change. Obviously, the world's VIPs had decided they were finally ready for the Environment to go mainstream!

And so we were beamed to a miraculous new world of urgency. We got bombarded with commercials of hybrid cars, showered with heart-warming messages promising clean energy – from oil companies! The C- students – that's TV journalists -- discovered a new playground. Out they went in armies, bear spotting, taking mud baths with elephants!

CO2 emissions became the new calories!

We welcome and celebrate this wonderful development, not only for our holidays' sake, but also because we would be very sad, were rhinoceroses to go extinct. Especially Roufa! Rhinos are Roufa's favorite animals! Their extinction is not directly related to Climate Change, but all this Awareness could save them anyway, as a collateral benefit.

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The next Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum is coming up, 23-27 January in Davos. What will it be this time? Could it be the colossal business opportunities of developing Africa, or has that happened already? We are very excited, that's for sure!

Creatures of the Emerging Markets, unite and take over!

If you have time in your hands and delusions of grandeur, or if you'd simply like to hang out in the same virtual room with a good-looking brunette, you can give the Davos Question a try:

Davos Conversation

Official Google Blog: The Davos Question

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Leave of Absence? Yes, it's true, we will be unable to blog for a while. Not for long, about ten days only. Mimi will be away for work. Roufa will stay home and spend his days in denial, watching two movies every evening to forget.

See you when we are back together.

1 comment:

Fanton said...

I shall patiently await your return.

(Looks at pocket-watch)

Are you back, yet?