Opec’s president on Monday warned oil prices could hit $200 a barrel and there would be little the cartel could do to help.

The comments made by Chakib Khelil, Algeria’s energy minister, came as oil prices hit a historic peak close to $120 a barrel, putting further pressure on global economies.

His remarks suggest Algeria wants Opec to continue to resist calls by US and European leaders for the cartel to pump more oil to help ease prices. But Mr Khelil blamed record oil prices on the weak dollar and global political insecurity.

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Demand is up for food assistance. Local soup kitchens and food pantries all report increased traffic since the beginning of the year, and some say donations are down.

Churches, a primary source of donated goods, continue to provide non-perishable items to agencies that distribute to the needy. But the growing demand is causing the need gap to widen.

Volunteers and program administrators at faith-based organizations such as Our Lady of Mercy Community Outreach, Seacoast Church’s Dream Center, Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church, Tricounty Family Ministries and Hillcrest Baptist Church independently confirmed that service providers have been especially challenged in recent weeks to satisfy the growing need.

Rising food prices have forced people to make hard choices and even forgo essentials, such as health care or child care in favor of food, several service providers said. Rising fuel prices have exacerbated the problem.

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The world economy has run into a brick wall. Despite countless warnings in recent years about the need to address a looming hunger crisis in poor countries and a looming energy crisis worldwide, world leaders failed to think ahead. The result is a global food crisis. Wheat, corn and rice prices have more than doubled in the past two years, and oil prices have more than tripled since the start of 2004. These food-price increases combined with soaring energy costs will slow if not stop economic growth in many parts of the world and will even undermine political stability, as evidenced by the protest riots that have erupted in places like Haiti, Bangladesh and Burkina Faso. Practical solutions to these growing woes do exist, but we’ll have to start thinking ahead and acting globally.

The crisis has its roots in four interlinked trends. The first is the chronically low productivity of farmers in the poorest countries, caused by their inability to pay for seeds, fertilizers and irrigation. The second is the misguided policy in the U.S. and Europe of subsidizing the diversion of food crops to produce biofuels like corn-based ethanol. The third is climate change; take the recent droughts in Australia and Europe, which cut the global production of grain in 2005 and ’06. The fourth is the growing global demand for food and feed grains brought on by swelling populations and incomes. In short, rising demand has hit a limited supply, with the poor taking the hardest blow.

So, what should be done? Here are three steps to ease the current crisis and avert the potential for a global disaster.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1734834,00.html

The Holy See is asking for measures to keep the production of biofuels from bringing about increased food prices to the point of threatening starvation in many countries.

Monsignor Renato Volante, the permanent observer of the Holy See at the Rome-based U.N. Organization for Food and Agriculture (FAO), participated in the FAO Regional Conference for Latin America and the Caribbean, which was held in Brasilia, Brazil, April 17-18.

Monsignor Volante proposed that the production of biofuels should not bring about a decrease in the production of agricultural products destined for the food market.

Biofuels are energy sources produced from a variety of different plants or plant products. Many developed countries have begun subsidizing the production of biofuels, which has resulted in decreased production of typical plant foods.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon encouraged today a coordinated effort to face the steeply rising price of food, which he said has developed into a “real global crisis.” He said some 100 million of the world’s poor now need aid to be able to buy food. Riots have broken out in some countries, such as Haiti, over the increased prices.

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The Rev. Bob Wickizer climbed the stairs and wooden ladders yesterday inside the steeple of historic St. Anne’s Episcopal Church to reach Annapolis’ town clock.

Eighty feet above the center of downtown, he and Kirsten Chapman, head of the church’s environmental ministry, gingerly stepped over loose wooden planks coated with dust and ducked under the four metal arms of the clock mechanism to get to the 16 incandescent bulbs that illuminate the clock. Chapman slipped in front of one of the four faces and carefully replaced the bulbs with compact fluorescent ones.

This is what it took, on Earth Day, to turn a 150-year-old landmark into a beacon for thinking green.

The new lights promise to keep an estimated 2.5 tons of carbon out of the atmosphere every year by using 75 percent less energy, and save energy and money by lasting 10 times longer. Wickizer hopes that the change will encourage the community to reduce its carbon footprint. Church officials say they believe this is part of God’s will.

“Having dominion over [the Earth] doesn’t mean trashing it,” Wickizer said. “It may have taken the church a while to wake up to that.”

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After struggling with soaring heating costs through the winter, millions of Americans are behind on electric and gas bills, and a record number of families could face energy shut-offs over the next two months, according to state energy officials and utilities around the country.

The escalating costs of heating oil, propane and kerosene, most commonly used in the Northeast, have posed the greatest burdens, officials say, but natural gas and electricity prices have also climbed at a time when low-end incomes are stagnant and prices have also jumped for food and gasoline.

In New Hampshire, applicants for fuel subsidies under the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program received an average of $600 in a one-time grant and up to $975 for the extremely poor who rely on heating oil or propane, the costliest fuels. But those grants, which in recent years have covered 60 percent of heating costs, covered only about 35 percent of those costs this winter, said Celeste Lovett, director of the state’s energy aid program. The state will have given aid to about 34,500 people by the end of April, Ms. Lovett said, a 5 percent increase over last year and the highest number ever.

The most immediate challenge is to help the high number of consumers who are far behind in electric and gas payments, said Mark Wolfe, director of the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association, which represents state aid officials in Washington.

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A high-efficiency furnace seems like a good choice for any aging building. But two?

That’s right, says Rev. Robert Lemon of St. John-in-the-Wilderness church.

When he and his congregation in Bright’s Grove decided it was time to “go green” they opted for two new furnaces so that portions of the church, hall and office can be separately heated.

In one year, the church has saved about $700 in natural gas consumption, making the investment economical as well as ecological. “That’s very good and over time it means the furnaces will pay for themselves,” Lemon said.

St. John-in-the-Wilderness Anglican church is 152 years old and has had numerous upgrades over the years. But in 2006, when an office was added, the congregation began to take energy efficiency seriously.

“We realized we could do better and we began to make changes,” Lemon said.

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With prices for rice, wheat, and corn soaring, food-related unrest has broken out in places such as Haiti, Indonesia, and Afghanistan. Several countries have blocked the export of grain. There is even talk that governments could fall if they cannot bring food costs down.

One factor being blamed for the price hikes is the use of government subsidies to promote the use of corn for ethanol production. An estimated 30% of America’s corn crop now goes to fuel, not food.

“I don’t think anybody knows precisely how much ethanol contributes to the run-up in food prices, but the contribution is clearly substantial,” a professor of applied economics and law at the University of Minnesota, C. Ford Runge, said. A study by a Washington think tank, the International Food Policy Research Institute, indicated that between a quarter and a third of the recent hike in commodities prices is attributable to biofuels.

Last year, Mr. Runge and a colleague, Benjamin Senauer, wrote an article in Foreign Affairs, “How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor.”

“We were criticized for being alarmist at the time,” Mr. Runge said. “I think our views, looking back a year, were probably too conservative.”

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Attorney General Michael Mukasey warned Wednesday that organized criminal networks have penetrated portions of the international energy market and tried to control energy resources.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey speaks Wednesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, he said similar efforts have targeted the international financial system by injecting billions of illicit funds to try to corrupt financial service providers.

Mukasey then vowed to beef up U.S. efforts to fight international organized crime, which he called a growing threat to U.S. security and stability.

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Lawmakers in the nation’s capital may be wringing their hands about record high gasoline prices. Others are putting their hands together ”” praying for help from a higher authority. Volunteers from a Washington, D.C., church soup kitchen launch a movement called Pray at the Pump.

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Rice prices in Thailand, the world’s top exporter, surged to $1,000 a tonne on Thursday, feeding concerns about food security as far as the United States after export curbs by governments worldwide.

The surging price of food and fuel has sparked riots in Africa and Haiti and raised fears that millions of the world’s poor will struggle to feed themselves. Some analysts, however, attribute much of the surge to panic buying by both consumers and governments rather than a dire shortage of supply.

After this week’s over five percent jump rice prices stand nearly three times higher than the start of the year. With no sign of the rally relenting, as traders expect more buyers to come into the market, government anxiety about social unrest from the soaring cost of Asia’s staple will deepen.

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The United Nations World Food Program announced Tuesday that increases in food prices could leave more than 100 million people hungry. The head of the program calls the international crisis a “silent tsunami.” A summit Tuesday was aimed at addressing the issue, and in attendance were representatives of farmers’ unions, aid agencies and supermarkets, along with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

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Farmers and food executives appealed fruitlessly to federal officials yesterday for regulatory steps to limit speculative buying that is helping to drive food prices higher. Meanwhile, some Americans are stocking up on staples such as rice, flour and oil in anticipation of high prices and shortages spreading from overseas.

Their pleas did not find a sympathetic audience at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), where regulators said high prices are mostly the result of soaring world demand for grains combined with high fuel prices and drought-induced shortages in many countries.

The regulatory clash came amid evidence that a rash of headlines in recent weeks about food riots around the world has prompted some in the United States to stock up on staples.

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Drivers were facing a £20 limit on fuel spending yesterday as panic buying intensified at Scotland’s filling stations.

Despite calls to motorists not to drain supplies, at least one station had to resort to rationing petrol and diesel.

Other filling station managers reported drivers losing their tempers in long queues.

Chris Furphy imposed at £20 maximum purchase for fuel at his Jet station in Dalmuir, Clydebank, in a bid to conserve stocks.

The move infuriated some of his customers.

Chris said: “It has been going mad in here all day, and the staff have been getting a lot of abuse.

“One woman stuck in £60, despite signs at every pump saying there was a £20 limit.

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Gasoline prices surpassed $3.50 a gallon nationwide for the first time and oil jumped to a record on Monday as the long rise of energy prices showed little evidence of giving way to recession fears.

The national average price for regular gasoline is up 22 percent from a year earlier, according to AAA, the automobile club. Some analysts expect it to approach $4 a gallon this summer, when demand is at a peak. Diesel fuel prices reached a record $4.20 a gallon on Monday, on average, compared with $2.93 a gallon a year earlier.

In trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, crude oil for next-month delivery settled Monday at $117.48 a barrel, up 79 cents, a new high. Oil prices have more than quadrupled in the last five years, and some analysts say that oil will reach $125 a barrel this year.

The latest rise in energy prices was prompted by reports that a Nigerian rebel group had blown up pipelines in the Niger Delta. An earlier attack on a pipeline, last week, forced Royal Dutch Shell to curtail exports by 169,000 barrels a day.

Because there is little spare capacity worldwide and supplies are tight, slight disruptions in oil production anywhere can push up prices.

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MARIKO Watanabe admits she could have chosen a better time to take up baking. This week, when the Tokyo housewife visited her local Ito-Yokado supermarket to buy butter to make a cake, she found the shelves bare.

“I went to another supermarket, and then another, and there was no butter at those either. Everywhere I went there were notices saying Japan has run out of butter. I couldn’t believe it ”” this is the first time in my life I’ve wanted to try baking cakes and I can’t get any butter,” said the frustrated cook.

Japan’s acute butter shortage, which has confounded bakeries, restaurants and now families across the country, is the latest unforeseen result of the global agricultural commodities crisis.

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Your cat probably has more mercury in its system than you do, and your dog has twice as much of the chemicals found in stain-resistant carpets and couches. That’s the conclusion of an environmental group that tested pets for a wide range of industrial chemicals.

If you walk on a stain-resistant carpet, you may kick up and inhale a tiny dose of perfluorochemicals, or PFCs. But what if you stretched out on it for a while and then licked your fur? That’s what Richard Wiles and his colleagues at the Environmental Working Group wanted to know.

“It occurred to us that no one had actually tested pets, [which] live in the same environment as we do, for the toxic contaminants that we know are in people,” Wiles says.

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Lindsay Renwick, the mayor of this dusty southern Australian town, remembers the constant whir of the rice mill. “It was our little heartbeat out there, tickety-tick-tickety,” he said, imitating the giant fans that dried the rice, “and now it has stopped.”

The Deniliquin mill, the largest rice mill in the Southern Hemisphere, once processed enough grain to satisfy the daily needs of 20 million people. But six long years of drought have taken a toll, reducing Australia’s rice crop by 98 percent and leading to the mothballing of the mill last December.

Ten thousand miles separate the mill’s hushed rows of oversized silos and sheds — beige, gray and now empty — from the riotous streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, but a widening global crisis unites them.

The collapse of Australia’s rice production is one of several factors contributing to a doubling of rice prices in the last three months — increases that have led the world’s largest exporters to restrict exports severely, spurred panicked hoarding in Hong Kong and the Philippines, and set off violent protests in countries including Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Italy, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, the Philippines, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

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These days everyone is worried about oil. The primitive black goo has been linked to climate change, economic disruption and other problems, but make no mistake: We still need oil, and lots of it. Not only is American demand rising””this year it’s expected to top 21 million barrels per day””but ascendant economies in India and China have developed huge appetites for the stuff. The stark reality is that the supply is finite. “Peak oil” theorists argue that production is already maxed out, meaning imminent shortages and sharper price spikes; more optimistic experts believe that day is 20 to 30 years away. Both camps agree that the task ahead is twofold: Develop new supplies while learning to stretch existing reserves.

There has not been a major find on U.S. soil since Prudhoe Bay in 1968, which means most major exploration has moved to the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, where drilling and production are difficult and expensive. Last year, a Chevron-led consortium announced the discovery of the Jack field, 270 miles off Louisiana. It may hold 15 billion barrels, which would more than double domestic reserves. “The technology that is being brought to bear is phenomenal,” says energy writer Robert Bryce, author of Gusher of Lies. “What we are seeing today in offshore drilling is the terrestrial version of the space program.” Bryce is among those pushing to open offshore leases along the East and West coasts currently under federal moratorium but estimated to hold as much as 19 billion barrels of oil and 86 trillion cu. ft. of natural gas.

Tapping vast unconventional sources that don’t flow to the surface is also hugely challenging. The oil sands of Alberta, Canada, contain 175 billion barrels of proven reserves””the largest in the world outside Saudi Arabia””but the oil costs as much as $15 per barrel to produce, compared to $2 for Saudi crude.

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The founders of the Bhavana Society Forest Monastery came here looking for a slice of densely wooded land where Buddhist monks, nuns and lay people could meditate in sylvan surroundings.

“They were looking for the quietude, the natural environment, for people to come to, as opposed to the concrete jungle most people live in,” said Bhante Rahula, vice abbot of the monastery since 1987.

But 24 years after the Buddhists bought the land, they say that quietude is now threatened by plans for a $1.1 billion power line that would entail clear-cutting a 200-foot-wide swath of forest nearby.

The monastery is part of a battle in three states between two electric companies on the one hand and thousands of landowners and residents on the other over the 260-mile, 500-kilovolt transmission line.

Opponents of the line say it is nothing more than a way for the East Coast to plug into cheaper coal-fired power from the Ohio Valley. The region should instead build its own more environmentally friendly electricity generators, they say, and do more to conserve energy.

“We don’t need this here,” said Susan Foster Blank, a lawyer whose cattle ranch in Washington County, Pa., would be crossed by the power line. “We don’t need more electricity. We won’t get any of the benefits, but we will get more pollution.”

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To fight global warming, a bill in Sacramento would enable Los Angeles County transit officials to increase taxes on motorists. It’s a bad idea that may foreshadow even worse to come.

Billed as a “climate change mitigation and adaptation fee,” the measure would cost motorists either an additional 3 percent motor fuel tax, or up to a $90 annual flat fee, based on vehicle emissions. The new charges would be on top of taxes already paid at the pump. Either option requires a majority approval by a vote of the people.

“At this point the people of the Los Angeles region have just had it when it comes to traffic and air quality,” claimed Assemblyman Mike Feuer, a Los Angeles Democrat and author of Assembly Bill 2558.

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Global warming will force faith organizations to significantly increase spending on humanitarian efforts–including refugee resettlement, feeding the hungry and disaster relief–according to a new study by the National Council of Churches.

More financial resources and volunteer services will be needed due to global climate change, which is expected to increase the lack of food, shelter and water available, especially among the poor, the study said.

“Individuals or communities living in poverty in developing countries tend to rely on their surroundings more for their day-to-day needs,” said Tyler Edgar, associate director of the NCC’s Climate and Energy Campaign. “These people are more likely to go down to a local river or stream to bring water for their family. With climate change, those systems are extremely vulnerable.”

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Michael Northcott: Well I think there are quite a lot of people in Australia and beyond who would deny that global warming is a moral issue, but many people in the world still do not think that global warming is a consequence of human action. So first of all, to understand it as a moral issue, you have to embrace what the science now clearly shows, which is that industrial emissions of greenhouse gases are changing the climate, and that’s the first thing. The second thing then is if you accept that industrial emissions are changing the climate, those who have put the most emissions up there historically have a very grave moral duty to act, and act first. Well what is actually happening is that countries like America, and indeed Australia until very recently, have argued that they’re not going to act until China and India act. And that’s why this is a fundamentally immoral issue because of the injustice of the fact that here in Australia you have 20 tonnes per person greenhouse gas emissions; in Africa you have about 0.2 tonnes per person greenhouse gas emissions, but it’s the Africans who are already suffering from malnutrition, whose farms and crops are failing.

Stephen Crittenden: The big ethical enemy in the book is neo-liberal economics, and the accompanying loss of a sense of the common good.

Michael Northcott: Yes, well I think neo-liberalism is easier to fix than sin. It’s a fairly recent idea, or set of ideas, it had its day in the 19th century, it was called laissez-faire economics in those days and it’s come back in the late 20th century to affect Australia, New Zealand, Britain and America primarily, but from their influence, much of the rest of the world.

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I find it interesting to reflect on what it was in the experience of their human authors, inspired as they may have been, to describe the beginnings as they do. The author of the above text appears to be aware that a vocation was given to him along with life. God dignified him with a calling to “till and keep” the garden, and gave him the competence to do so””since human beings are the only creatures who can learn skills and see to the consequences of what they do.

In my reading of this story, that first human creature is now everyman, the ‘green’ vocation is universal, and the garden is God’s precious earth. It is a vocation we must all reclaim””in whatever way and place that is given us to do.

In one of our Eucharistic prayers we speak of “this fragile earth, our island home.” In many respects it is fragile, but it is also resilient if not endlessly forgiving; we now know more about all its creatures and ecosystems than any generation before us; and we understand the interdependence of all life and all the conditions of life. Still, time is not on our side.

I have often heard theologians say that all creation “fell” when Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating of the fruit of the tree that was forbidden them. That seems to me an utterly simplistic and useless understanding of what has happened, and lets modern generations off much too easily. More truthfully, it is the vast technologies of the industrial revolution that have enabled and magnified our ongoing abuse of earth and her intricate systems of interdependence

It is late Lent, but it is still time for repentance and amendment of life.

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James Willman seems to be a nice enough guy: polite, good-humored and hard-working, pumping gas seven days a week at the Amerigo Gas Station in the tiny Big Sur town of Gorda, about 35 miles north of Cambria.

But at least once a day, Willman said, someone pulls in and starts cursing him.

“They say all kinds of stuff”””˜You ought to be shot,’ or ”˜Where’s your mask?’ ” Willman said. “I’m like, ”˜Hey, I just work here.’ ”

The reason for consumer hostility is that the station is serving up what might be the costliest gas in the land.

This week, as crude oil flirted with $110 a barrel and gasoline prices surged nationwide, a gallon of regular at Amerigo was going for $5.20.

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SPENCER MICHELS: Yahoo has bought carbon credits by supporting a wind farm in India and a hydroelectric dam in Brazil.

CHRISTINA PAGE: It’s equivalent to taking 35,000 cars off the road or turning off the Vegas strip for two months.

SPENCER MICHELS: The demand for offsets has led to a growing, unregulated industry of for-profits and nonprofits selling carbon credits. Live Neutral, a nonprofit, sells carbon offsets to clients like Transgroup, a company that works with air, truck and rail companies, big CO-2 emitters.

Live Neutral finds projects to offset those emissions, according to founder Jason Smith.

JASON SMITH, Founder, Live Neutral: We can actually start reducing emissions on an industrial scale today if we can built the fiscal support to make those projects possible. You still have a carbon footprint, but it’s something you can do today to take responsibility for that footprint.

SPENCER MICHELS: Transgroup says that it’s good business and good public relations to buy carbon credits for its customers.

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For the first time in years, people are buying a little less gasoline in America. Analysts say it may be a sign that high prices and a slowing economy are beginning to change people’s driving habits.

Since the beginning of this year, gasoline consumption has fallen about half a percent, according to the Department of Energy.

The last time gas use fell ”” other than after Hurricane Katrina ”” was more than a decade ago. That it’s falling again now suggests that high prices are finally influencing behavior. Since November, prices have averaged $3 a gallon or more. That’s the longest they’ve ever stayed that high.

Doug MacIntyre, who has studied gas consumption at the Department of Energy since the 1980s, says he thinks people may be responding by cutting down on trips or using public transit more.

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