ROME ? Rome’s obsession with food goes beyond the pizzerias and the trattorias that make it a gastronomical wonder. Appropriately, the city is also home to three United Nations food agencies whose job, ultimately, is to keep the undernourished fed. They wonder whether biofuel is an item that should be struck from the planet’s menu.

Continue reading “What good is green if the poor go hungry?”

Food prices are heating up globally as soaring energy costs, wonky weather and an ethanol boom all combine to push grocery bills higher.
Canadian food prices are 3.1 per cent higher than a year ago, Statistics Canada said Wednesday, well ahead of last year’s rate of 2.4 per cent. Higher prices for meat and dairy are the main culprits, but the pickup in prices spills into everything from bread and applies to ice cream, eggs, jam and juice.
The reasons vary with each product, but one factor behind higher prices may be an ethanol boom south of the border, with Canadian chicken and dairy farmers saying they’re seeing higher feed prices.

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Good for Canada’s Green Party. Last week, the Greens issued a policy to combat climate change that was the most arresting and innovative in Canada.
Parts of it were silly; all of it was ambitious. Predictably, it was largely ignored by the media. Who’s interested in policy anyway, especially from the country’s fifth party? Paris Hilton, murder trials and federal-provincial cockfights – now that’s news.

Continue reading “The Greens are right: Use economic clubs to battle climate change”