Let Them Eat ... Biofuel?

A series begins in today's Toronto Star on the West's shameful diversion of upwards of 30% of the corn crop for ethanol production, thereby contributing to the world food crisis. If this diversion by our elected leaders strikes you as immoral and indefensible, you might want to check out the series.

Carbon Cap and Trade

There is a very interesting article in the current New York Times Magazine profiling Jim Rogers, the chief executive of the electric company Duke Energy. Surprisingly, he has long been an advocate of establishing a carbon cap and trade system, something the United States will likely implement in the next year or so. For a full explanation of how the system would work, as well as an insightful profile on an interesting and rather iconoclastic businessman, I recommend the piece.

How Many More Canadians Will Die in Afghanistan?

There is a very interesting article in today's Globe and Mail outlining a U.S. backed plan to build a pipeline to deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India. The pipeline would run through Kandahar province, the very place where Canadian soldiers are dying in record numbers to "bring democracy to the people." No doubt, the U.S. will be using similar meaningless rhetoric to justify this pipeline. Of course, it has nothing to do with the American endless thirst for control of resources which, of course, is also not the reason they invaded and are now bogged down in Iraq.

It is times like these that I wish I were still teaching Orwell's "Politics and the English Language."

What Word Other Than 'Evil' Describes This?

A while back, I wrote a blog entry on the immorality of using food to create ethanol. In today’s Globe and Mail, business writer Eric Reguly reports on the recent food summit which accomplished nothing in easing the food crisis. I have reproduced his article below. I have bolded certain parts of the article for emphasis.

King Corn wins battle at UN
ERIC REGULY
June 9, 2008 at 6:17 AM EDT

ROME — All hail the mighty American corn cob!

American corn was the biggest winner of the United Nations food summit in Rome last week. It wasn't supposed to be. Many countries and aid agencies - Egypt, Venezuela, Oxfam, even the director-general of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization - came into the summit with corn, the de facto international symbol of the biofuels industry, in their gunsights.

They lost the gun fight. After three days of squabbling, the UN's final declaration did absolutely nothing to halt, even slow, the rise of the biofuels industry. Turning food into fuel was, in effect, sanctioned by the very UN food agencies that had called the summit to find solutions to the food crisis. People can go hungry. But heaven forbid that you can't find biofuels to fill your tank.

The outcome couldn't have made corn farmers happier. On Thursday, the day the UN yak-fest expired with a whimper, American corn prices rose to a record high. Corn for delivery in 2009, when one-third of the crop is expected to be consumed by the ethanol industry, reached a record $6.83 (U.S.) a bushel on the Chicago spot market.

That's about 250 per cent higher than the 2006 price.

Commodities analysts said corn would have taken a dive had the summit's biofuels fight gone the other way.

To be sure, the food summit had its good points. It was the biggest gathering of its kind since the early 1970s, the last time famine was mentioned in the same breath as rising food prices.

The Rome summit certainly raised global awareness about prices, malnourishment and the threat of starvation. Forty-four heads of state and government, from Albania to Zimbabwe, showed up. So did World Bank president Robert Zoellick and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund. Billions of dollars in food aid were pledged. The summit ensured that food security will move to the forefront of the summer's G8 summit in Japan.

The bad news? It was a summit only in name. The event could have better been described as a sales convention, as if each country had a booth to hawk its own agriculture policy and badmouth the competition.

There was Brazil, defending sugar cane ethanol as an environmental and economic miracle while denouncing the corn-based version so adored by the U.S. and Canada. In another booth, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was complaining about food prices while insisting on doing his bit to ensure painfully high rice prices by imposing an export ban on Egyptian rice.

Down the aisle was Josette Sheeran, the executive director of the World Food Program, the world's biggest emergency food agency. She was thanking donor countries for the $1.2-billion funnelled into the WFP since March to fill a food procurement budget depleted by record prices for wheat, rice and other staples. But would she denounce biofuels for clobbering her buying power even though every delegate at the summit agreed the food-to-fuel surge has had at least some role in pushing up food prices? Forget it. Her reticence might have had something to do with the fact that ethanol-crazed America is the WFP's biggest donor (Canada, another ethanol junkie, is third).

The snazziest sales booth in the joint was run by Ed Schafer, the U.S. Agriculture Secretary. Call him Mr. Ethanol. The man expertly defused the anti-biofuels time bomb. He said the world can have great heaps of both biofuels and food, and claimed that ethanol accounts for no more than 3 per cent of the recent increase in food prices. The figure is, at best, optimistically low. The International Food Policy Research Institute of Washington, a research group funded by governments, puts the figure at 30 per cent. Other estimates are as high as 60 per cent.

Mr. Schafer's hard-line position put the UN Food and Agriculture Agency (FAO), the summit's sponsor, and the delegates of 181 countries in a bind. A declaration condemning biofuels, or even demanding they no longer be subsidized - the UN says developed countries last year pumped $11-billion into biofuel support - would alienate the Americans. They could retaliate by killing the final declaration, withholding funding to the three UN food agencies in Rome, or both.

In the end, predictably, the declaration did nothing more than call for more "studies" on biofuels' effect on food security. The subsidies will remain in place. So will government mandates of biofuel content in gasoline and diesel (Canada is bringing in a 5-per-cent ethanol content rule for gasoline) and import barriers (the U.S. imposes a hefty tariff on sugar cane ethanol from Brazil).

Worst of all, so will the upward pressure on food prices because of the diversion of land from food to fuel crops. In a food-scarce world, even the loss of 5 per cent of the arable land to food crops can push up prices significantly. In the European Union, as much as 15 per cent of the land will have to be devoted to biofuels if content mandates are to be met.

You have to feel sorry for the poorest countries. They expected the developed world to do a little more than fling guilt money at the problem. They left the summit frustrated and more than a little afraid that food will get scarcer before it gets plentiful, if it gets plentiful. But they learned something. They learned the American corn farmer is the biggest power of them all.

The Province Takes Action

Owing to the corruption and financial mismanagement of the Toronto Catholic District School Board, the Province of Ontario has appointed Norbert Hartmann to take control of its finances. Read the full story in today's Toronto Star

How a Corrupt Board Deals with its Financial Improprieties

Given the Toronto Catholic District School Board’s penchant for enriching its members with lavish expenditures, is it any wonder that they are taking out the fruits of their profligacy by cutting teachers, budgets, and support staff? As usual, the bolded sections are mine.


Catholic board cuts 85 teachers
Trustees eliminate $14 million deficit, cut school budgets 10%
June 3, 2008

Comments on this story (9)

Kristin Rushowy
EDUCATION REPORTER
In a flurry of voting early this morning, Toronto Catholic trustees effectively balanced their budget, cutting almost $14 million and putting several areas under review to make up the difference.

"We are committed to a balanced budget," board chair Catherine LeBlanc-Miller said, adding that if there's any deficit left over after the review, "it will come out of trustee services, trustee expenses."

Among the cuts approved: laying off 85 teachers ($4 million), not hiring secondary teachers to fill job openings ($1 million), 10 per cent reduction to school budgets ($1.2 million), laying off 32 support staff such as caretakers and secretaries ($782,000), and cutting contract child and youth workers ($500,000).

Trustees rejected a move to axe full-day kindergarten, an issue they had previously voted against even though staff had suggested it could save almost $1 million.
Staff had been asked to provide details of savings. They said that eliminating the teacher positions and support staff effective Jan. 1, "will cause upheaval for a large number of students" but save about $5 million.

The Toronto Elementary Catholic Teachers union has said it's not fair for the board to balance the budget on the backs of its members, and said the cuts are beyond what's necessary to address declining enrolment, which this year is about 900 students across the board.

The union also said trustees should look to cutting administration and governance, areas where the board has overspent $6 million in the past four years.

Trustees had nixed the idea of layoffs but reconsidered after Education Minister Kathleen Wynne said she was concerned about the board's financial position in light of its $14 million deficit and the trustee spending scandal.

Wynne last week sent in investigator Pierre Filiatrault to review the board's finances and recommend whether she should send in a supervisor.

The trustees met last night, their first of two meetings this week after three last week, to whittle down the deficit.

Trustees are also in hot water with the province following a blistering May 7 report by a provincial investigator, who found they cost taxpayers more than $100,000 a year, about the highest in Ontario.

Norbert Hartmann uncovered all kinds of spending abuses, including frequent meals and meals with alcohol charged to the public purse, and thousands spent on promotional materials. Trustees also kept board-bought equipment such as cellphones after their term was over, and one was charging rent for a home office.


Trustee Mary Cicogna had billed the board almost $700 for a trip to Florida, which she said was to check out Ave Maria University, a Catholic institution she said is trying to make inroads in attracting Canadian students.

However, in a letter distributed to trustees and the public last night, she said she wanted to withdraw her expense, "not because it is an inappropriate expenditure ... but I feel that it is necessary to do this in order to begin the process of restoring public confidence."

At the meeting last week, trustees also decided to end their medical/dental and life insurance benefits – which aren't allowed under the Education Act – as of July 1 and end their car allowance, which again is not permitted.

Last night, ratepayer Michael Baillargeon said that trustees should cut their honorarium, limit expenses to $250 per month and use secretarial services supplied by the board.

He also said trustee Oliver Carroll, who expensed $7,577 for a master's degree in educational administration, should repay the money. "Get in line for a student loan like our children did and like today's students must," he said.

Baillargeon also urged the trustees who employed each other's relatives, at a cost of $4,000 each – trustees John Del Grande and Ann Andrachuk – to repay that money.
Toronto Star