17-year-old finds bacteria combination that breaks down plastic bags in months
Jul 01, 2008 01:17 PM
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Kristine Owram
THE CANADIAN PRESS

As jurisdictions across Canada take action to ban the use of landfill-clogging plastic bags, which can take up to 1,000 years to decompose, an Ontario high school student has discovered a way to break down the pesky plastic in a matter of months.

Daniel Burd, a 17-year-old student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, took home the top prize at the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Ottawa for his project.

The prize earned him $10,000, as well as several other awards and entrance scholarships to various universities equalling tens of thousands of dollars.

But Burd, who will start Grade 12 in the fall, is modest about his idea, saying it literally hit him on the head one day.

“At home I have to do chores if I follow my mom’s instructions,” Burd said in a telephone interview from his home in Waterloo, Ont. “Each time I open the closet where we keep our cleaning supplies and things like that, the plastic bags are on the top shelf and they always fall down like an avalanche onto my head.

“One day I just got so tired of it and I began to research it to find out what other people are doing with these plastic bags, and through my research I found out that we’re not doing too much.”

Burd discovered that approximately 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide each year. Billions of these end up in the oceans, where they are ingested by animals that often die as a result.

He also learned that plastic bags can take anywhere between 20 and 1,000 years to decompose – numbers in which Burd found unlikely inspiration.

Burd’s hypothesis was that if plastic bags do eventually break down, it should be possible to isolate and concentrate the micro-organism responsible for the decomposition, thus speeding up the process.

To test his hypothesis, Burd took a few soil samples from a local landfill and mixed them with polyethylene, the substance used to make plastic bags, as well as a solution to encourage bacterial growth. After concentrating the solution several times and incubating it for 12 weeks, Burd took the resulting bacterial culture and tested it on strips of polyethylene.

After six weeks, the strips had lost more than 17 per cent of their weight compared to a set of control strips.

Burd concluded that a combination of two types of bacteria – Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas – was most effective at breaking down the polyethylene. After isolating these two bacteria, combining them with some sodium acetate and incubating the solution at 37 C, Burd was able to degrade the plastic by 43 per cent in six weeks. He figures the solution would entirely break down plastic bags in a matter of three months.

Burd said his findings could have a real impact on the amount of garbage that ends up in landfills – or as litter in our oceans and on our streets.

He envisions what he calls “recycling stations” for plastic bags, which would essentially act as large composters.

“It’s like a container with constant temperatures and conditions in which you would have your liquid solution, your microbes and your plastic bags,” he said.

Burd said he plans to keep working on his project to further reduce the time it takes to decompose the plastic bags, and he’s thinking big when it comes to the future.

“To do that, it would be necessary to do more work in the laboratory with sequencing and things like that, and then after that, you can take it to the patent level,” he said.

He acknowledges his discovery is a “very big step,” but says there’s a lot more work to do before it’s marketable.

In the meantime, the ever-modest Burd says he will continue to work towards getting into a good university to study science.

“I hope I will go to university. I plan to apply.”

Source: The Star

Electricity, public transit and household goods and services to cost more by year’s end
May 29, 2008 04:30 AM
Romina Maurino
THE CANADIAN PRESS

Consumers feeling the impact of high oil prices at the pumps may be in for new headaches this year as soaring energy prices drive up the cost of everything from airline tickets to dry cleaning, couriers and diapers.

High oil prices, which have already boosted the price of gasoline, fertilizers and food, may hit Canadians in new areas, according to economists.

An initial wave of increases could expand to the price of public transportation as well as household goods and services as diverse as home-cleaning services and diapers, said Adrienne Warren, an economist at Scotiabank.

“Through the summer and into the fall, we’ll probably see increasing pressures on a wider range of goods outside of transportation such as air fares and train fares, to consumers goods in your grocery stores and your department stores.”

These “rely on distribution and manufacturing that are energy-intensive and that will put more pressure on the retailers to pass the costs that they’re facing on to the consumers,” Warren said.

While the price of a big-screen TV is unlikely to change because such electronics are often manufactured outside of Canada and benefit from the strong loonie, services such as dry cleaning, carpet cleaning, car rentals and couriers could all increase.

“A large part of their costs comes from transportation, going from home to home, or energy use,” she said.

Yesterday, Dow Chemical Co. became the latest company to announce price increases because of the high cost of energy. The Michigan company, which makes chemical, plastic and agricultural products, said it had seen a fourfold increase in the price of raw materials over the last six years.

Dow’s announcement came a day after Nova Scotia Power said it applied for a rate increase of just under 12 per cent. The province’s electric utility said it needed the extra money to cover soaring fuel prices.

Earlier this month, Air Canada and WestJet imposed domestic fuel surcharges that would add $90 a round-trip for flights of more than 1,601.6 kilometres each way.

Also, Kimberly-Clark Corp. said it would raise prices for its Huggies diapers, Pull-Ups training pants, Cottonelle and Scott bathroom tissue, Viva towels and Kleenex facial tissue by as much as 8 per cent.

But it’s still too early to be stockpiling any goods just yet, TD economist Craig Alexander maintained.

“Up to this point, we really haven’t seen the traditional pass-through that has been characteristic during previous oil price shocks,” he said. “Markets have been very competitive, and so as a result, businesses have not been willing to pass along the end result to the consumer.”

Doug Porter, a senior economist at the Bank of Montreal, said inflation on consumer goods has thus far been “relatively limited.”

“For some of the price increases to stick, you’d need solid underlying economic momentum, which I don’t think is a given in Canada, and certainly not in the U.S. over the next year,” Porter said.

“But we’re at risk, if oil prices continue moving higher, of it becoming a little bit more of a serious inflation risk.”

Source: The Toronto Star

May 27, 2008 04:30 AM
Cara Anna
Associated Press

BEIJING–Parents whose only child was killed or maimed in China’s earthquake would be allowed to have another, officials who administer the country’s one-child policy in part of the disaster zone said yesterday.

Couples whose only child was killed, severely injured or disabled in the quake can get a certificate allowing them to have another child, said the Chengdu Population and Family Planning Committee, which oversees the policy in the capital of Sichuan province.

The May 12 quake was extra painful to many Chinese because it killed so many only children. The destruction of almost 7,000 classrooms during a school day left China heartbroken, with newspaper photos focusing on piles of dusty book bags and small hands emerging from the debris.

The earthquake has killed more than 65,000 people, and with more than 23,000 missing the toll is expected to rise further. Officials say they haven’t been able to estimate the number of children killed.

A Chengdu committee official, who gave only his surname, Wang, said the one-child policy exceptions were being made specific to quake victims. He described his comments as clarifying existing policy rather than announcing changes, and would not elaborate.

Though commonly called a one-child policy, the rules already offer a welter of exceptions and loopholes, some of them put into practice because of widespread opposition to the limits.

For example, in large parts of rural China, most families are allowed a second child, especially if the first is a girl. Local officials often have wide discretion on enforcement, a fact that has made the policy susceptible to corruption.

Chen Xueyun is among the parents who could be affected. His 8-year-old son, Weixi, was killed when the family’s apartment in Qingchuan collapsed. Chen said he searched three days before finding the boy’s body. He wears his son’s blue plastic watch, as a reminder.

Chen said yesterday’s announcement could offer parents some hope after their grief subsides.

“If they are still sad and depressed, it’s impossible to talk about another baby,” he said. “But in the future, it could be quite helpful for them.”

The announcement affects the city of Chengdu, which has 10 million people, as well as two of the hardest-hit cities nearby, Dujiangyan and Pengzhou. The committee plans to help about 1,200 of the worst-hit families, but that number could change, Wang said.

It wasn’t clear whether other cities in the quake zone, including Qingchuan, would make similar announcements.

A woman answering phones at the Sichuan provincial family planning office said officials are studying the issue. She didn’t give her name, as is common in China. China’s one-child policy was launched in the late 1970s to control its exploding population and ensure better education and health care. The law includes certain exceptions for ethnic groups, rural families and families where both parents are only children. The government says the policy has prevented an additional 400 million births, but critics say it has also led to forced abortions, sterilizations and a dangerously imbalanced sex ratio as local authorities pursue sometimes severe birth quotas set by Beijing and families abort girls out of a traditional preference for male heirs.

The announcement offers a glimpse into the strict workings of the one-child system.

Couples who have more than one child are commonly punished by fines. The announcement says that if a child born illegally was killed in the quake, the parents will no longer have to pay fines for that child – but the previously paid fines won’t be refunded.

If a couple’s legally born child was killed and the couple is left with an illegally born child under the age of 18, that child can be registered as the legal child – an important move that gives the child previously denied rights including nine years of free compulsory education.

Many Chinese have shown interest in adopting earthquake orphans, and yesterday’s announcement said there are no limits on the number a family can adopt. A couple that adopts won’t be penalized if they later have their own biological child.

Chen said he would like to have another child, but he hasn’t spoken about it with his wife.

“She doesn’t have good health, and she’s afraid it would be dangerous to have another pregnancy, so I don’t dare talk about it,” he said. “She asked me if we could adopt a quake orphan, but I told her we should talk about it later.”

Source: The Toronto Star

Many experts think low-cut necklines on well-endowed women are plain distracting
May 14, 2008 04:30 AM
Diana Zlomislic
Living Reporter

In his essay, “A Brief History of Cleavage,” the American poet Wayne Koestenbaum raves about a woman’s décolletage as a “sign of sophistication . . . a gift.”

Julie Couillard might disagree. The former girlfriend of Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier has been the subject of national discussion since she was photographed alongside the politician wearing a frothy paisley dress with a plunging neckline.

“You people have ruined my life,” Couillard said by telephone from her home in Laval, Que., yesterday.

Opposition parties called for Bernier’s resignation; dating her, they said, posed a national security risk because she was once married to a member of a biker gang. But Couillard’s greatest threat seemed to be her “weapons of mass distraction.”

So how much cleavage is too much cleavage?

Image and etiquette consultant Diane Craig works with financial, pharmaceutical and law firms across Toronto. She also has an office in Ottawa where she has been advising politicians on the secrets of sartorial success for more than 25 years.

“In business, it’s important that no cleavage be shown. … It’s plain inappropriate. It’s déclassé. It’s as disturbing for women as it is for men.”

Craig also advises well-endowed women against wearing long chains or necklaces “so we don’t get the effect of hills and valleys.”

It goes back to Adam and Eve and the serpent, says David Schatzky, a Toronto psychotherapist. Our compulsion or revulsion toward the valley that divides a woman’s breasts reflects a “deep-rooted mistrust of women as the seductress who will lure men off their path and into something that’s evil and dangerous.

“I’m not presenting this as my view or as a moral judgment. I think it’s a reflection of a deeper way that people think, unconsciously.”

On Bloor St. W., Haylie Bewick is mulling her clothing options at H&M. Bewick, who favours cleavage, says she follows the laws of distraction when getting dressed in the morning.

“It draws attention away from the hips if you’re apple-shaped like me. If you look bigger in the boobs, the slimmer you look in the waist.”

The typical Canadian woman’s breasts fill a B cup, says Dr. Stephen Mulholland, a Toronto plastic surgeon.

For him, too big means the breasts “become more notable than the person because they’re either poorly done or too big or they’re two unnatural-looking bubbles on the chest.”

Just about everyone, it seems, has an official position on the subject.

“There’s cleavage and then there’s cleavage,” says Thomas Spanidis, the owner and operator of a Co-Op taxi in Toronto. “It all depends on what function you’re going to, your status, the people you’re associating with. You don’t go to church to receive communion in a low-cut top. The priest’s chalice will fall on the floor.”

Tosca Delfino and her friend are talking business over coffee at Lettieri in Yorkville. They are fashion designers reviewing sketches.

“I don’t see a problem with it as long as you don’t look like you’re a whore.”

Source: The Toronto Star

Many stores in the U.S. are limiting bulk sales of some kinds of the grain as supply fears leap

Apr 24, 2008 04:30 AM
Dana Flavelle
business reporter

In another sign the global food crisis is hitting North American consumers, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. says it is limiting sales of some kinds of rice at many Sam’s Club warehouse-style stores in the United States due to “recent supply and demand trends.”

Sam’s Club customers can buy up to four bags of jasmine, basmati and other white long-grain rices, Wal-Mart said yesterday.

The news comes a day after Costco Wholesale Corp., the biggest U.S. warehouse-club operator, said customers worried about global food shortages were stocking up on rice and flour. Costco said it is not formally limiting sales but is watching supplies closely.

“There’s been an increase in purchasing, but we think it’s manageable,” Costco CEO James Sinegal told Reuters news Agency. “At the moment, we think we have it relatively under control.” If a customer “wants 10 pallets of flour, we’d probably say, `No, we can’t give you that. We can give you one pallet,’” Sinegal said.

So far, no signs of shortages or hoarding have surfaced in Canada, spokespeople for Wal-Mart and Costco said yesterday.

Both Sam’s and Costco cater to bulk buyers.

“While select Sam’s Clubs in the U.S. have put some restrictions on very large purchases of specific specialty rice grains, we have not seen that need yet,” said Kevin Groh of Wal-Mart Canada Corp.

Costco Canada said it hasn’t seen any change in customers’ behaviour. “There’s nothing noticeably different in our business, except for the pressures on pricing,” said spokesperson Ron Damiani.

The cost of basic grains, such as wheat, corn and soybeans, has been soaring due to demand in fast-growing economies, such as China and India, rising fuel and fertilizer prices, competition from biofuels and market speculation.

But rice is a different story.

Rice is not a biofuel, but the amount of available wet, flat land to grow rice in is declining due to increased urbanization and flooding by new hydroelectric dams in Asia.

The shortage is a worldwide food crisis that is hitting poor countries much harder than the developed world, noted David Dunne, an adjunct professor of marketing at the University of Toronto’s Joseph L. Rotman School of Management.

“In the case of rice, the major cause is demand: with the rapid development of India and China and the growth of the middle class, demand for rice and other grains has skyrocketed, and prices have gone up accordingly.”

In a bid to cool demand at home, some developing countries have imposed limits on exports, including India, Vietnam and Egypt.

Costco’s Sinegal said he believes the recent jump in demand was prompted by media reports about food shortages in some countries. He cautioned against “creating a panic situation.” If an item sells out, he said, it’s usually back on store shelves by the next day.

Meanwhile, the price of wheat fell to six-month lows yesterday on speculation India, the world’s second-biggest consumer, will produce enough to replenish stockpiles this year and reduce the need to import.

Wheat futures also declined on more favourable weather in the U.S., falling 4 per cent on the Chicago Board of Trade to $8.315 (U.S.) a bushel for July delivery. However, the contracts are still up 68 per cent over this time last year.

With files from Reuters News Agency

Source: The Toronto Star

Canadians can expect to pay more at grocery stores as higher feed costs advance through the food chain

Apr 25, 2008 04:30 AM
Dana Flavelle
business reporter

Canadian consumers can expect to see more price hikes in food amid global shortages of basic grains and soaring fuel costs, more food industry executives are warning.

“These are stunningly challenging and unique times,” Michael McCain, president and chief executive officer of Maple Leaf Foods Inc., said at the company’s annual meeting in Toronto yesterday.

Comparing the current rise in the price of grains to the soaring cost of oil and base metals, McCain said: “This is the beginning of a structural increase in food prices. Food will be considerably more expensive well into the future.”

Canadian consumers have been relatively insulated from the global crisis in food, so far. Food inflation last month was zero, according to Statistics Canada.

But that’s only because higher prices for wheat-based products, such as pasta, bread and flour, were offset by lower prices for imported fresh fruits and vegetables due to the Canadian dollar’s increased purchasing power last fall, the association that speaks for Canada’s major supermarkets said. There’s also a lag between increases in grain prices and in the prices of grain-fed animals, the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors added.

“Canadians aren’t experiencing the same price hikes as the rest of the world. Having said that, it is coming,” said David Wilkes, the council’s senior vice-president of trade and development.

The price of pasta is up 26 per cent compared with last year, bread is up 9.9 per cent and flour is up 8.3 per cent at the grocery stores, Wilkes noted, referring to Statistics Canada’s latest data.

And more price hikes are coming as the dollar stabilizes and animal feed costs work their way through the food chain, Wilkes cautioned.

Maple Leaf Foods, whose brands include Schneider’s meats, Dempster’s Bread and Olivieri pasta, said it is doing everything it can to control costs but has still had to pass on increases.

The Toronto-based company is Canada’s third-largest processor of branded foods, after Procter & Gamble Co. and Kraft Foods Inc., which have also raised prices.

Despite raising the price of bread three times in the past 18 months by a total of 50 cents a loaf, it wasn’t enough to keep up with the rising cost of wheat, McCain said following the meeting.

Though wheat prices are now pulling back on forecasts of a better crop this summer, McCain said Maple Leaf Foods might need to raise bread prices again to catch up with earlier increases.

Pork prices will also likely rise in the next nine to 12 months as a glut of hogs on the North American market eases, McCain said.

More farmers are leaving the money-losing business, encouraged by a new federal program that will pay them $150 million this year to destroy breeding sows.

At Maple Leaf Foods, both its hog production and bakery business have “felt the brunt of the unprecedented run-up in grain prices, and also the Canadian currency,” McCain said, after reporting the company lost $10,000 in the quarter, or broke even on a per share basis, compared with a profit of $10.5 million, or eight cents per share, in the year-ago period.

The company’s results include its 88 per cent stake in Canada Bread Co., which said profit fell 32 per cent on higher costs for ingredients.

Maple Leaf Foods said earnings on processed meats and meals rose. While the quarterly results were weaker, the company said it stands to benefit from the recent pullback in wheat prices and higher hog prices in future.

The company is in the middle of a multi-year turnaround plan aimed at transitioning from a basic pork producer to a value added meals and baked-goods business.

Outside Canada, there were a host of new developments in the global food crisis yesterday, including:

The head of the United Nations food agency said it should set aside $1.7 billion (U.S.) to help farmers in developing countries buy more seeds, fertilizer and animal feed to grow more crops to feed the poor.

The International Monetary Fund is in talks with 10 developing nations about providing extra loans to cope with soaring food costs.

South Africa’s largest labour federation started nationwide protests against spiralling food and electricity prices.

Pakistan joined a growing list of countries who said they might curb exports to protect the price of rice at home.

Rice prices in Thailand, the world’s largest rice producer, jumped to $1,000 a tonne on concerns about food security.

Japan, the world’s biggest net importer of food, said it would ask the World Trade Organization as early as next week to introduce rules preventing countries from limiting exports of basic staples, such as wheat and rice.

Canadians consumers have been insulated from the kind of chaos higher food prices are causing in developing countries, said Al Weersink, an agricultural economist at the University of Guelph.

That’s partly because they spend just 10 per cent of their disposable income on food, compared to 50 per cent in poorer nations, he said.

Source: The Toronto Star

Health Canada expected to label chemical they contain – bisphenol A – a dangerous substance

Apr 15, 2008 08:15 PM
Brenda Bouw
THE CANADIAN PRESS

VANCOUVER–Three of Canada’s major retailers said today they are pulling plastic water and baby bottles that contain the controversial chemical bisphenol A, in anticipation of Health Canada labelling it a dangerous substance.

The Forzani Group Ltd., Canada’s largest sporting goods retailer, Hudson’s Bay Co., which includes the Bay and Zellers stores, and Canadian Tire Corp. Ltd. said Tuesday they are removing BPA products and will refund customers who bought the bottles at their stores.

“Pending the government announcement, the company will immediately move to clear all 94 Bay stores and 280 Zellers stores of BPA baby products, and effective immediately, HBC will no longer sell any baby feeding products that are not BPA-free at any of its stores,” the company said in an e-mail to The Canadian Press.

Bob Sartor, chief executive officer of Forzani, which has more than 500 stores across Canada under such banners as Sport Check, Athlete’s World and Coast Mountain Sports, said the company began removing the water bottles early Tuesday.

Canadian Tire Corp. pulled all plastic water bottles and food storage containers known to contain BPA from store shelves at all Canadian Tire, Mark’s Work Wearhouse and PartSource stores.

“While Health Canada’s assessment and conclusions have not yet been completed, Canadian Tire, Mark’s Work Wearhouse and PartSource are implementing the sales stop to err on the side of caution in the interest of customer safety,” the company said.

Last year, Mountain Equipment Co-op removed plastic bottles containing BPA from its shelves, while Lululemon Athletica Inc. said all new water bottles arriving in its stores this year would be free of the chemical.

A Globe and Mail report that Health Canada is expected to announce the finding against BPA on Wednesday was “sufficient cause to take the high road and get it off the shelf,” Sartor said in an interview.

“We are doing this out of an overabundance of caution.”

Forzani couldn’t immediately say how much sales revenue the water bottles represent, but said it wasn’t material.

“Even if it was, the bottom line is that if there are any significant concerns, we have to deal with it.”

If Health Canada marks BPA a dangerous substance it will be the first regulatory body in the world to do so, said Kapil Khatter, pollution policy adviser for Environmental Defence, a Toronto-based advocacy group that has lobbied for a ban on BPA in food and beverage containers.

“We have been saying for months there is enough evidence in animal studies that low doses of BPA are harmful,” said Khatter.

“I think it’s the right thing to do. They are being responsible about protecting our health.”

A preliminary report issued Tuesday by the U.S. National Toxicology Program said experiments on rats found precancerous prostate tumours, urinary system problems and early puberty when the animals were fed or injected with low doses of the plastics chemical bisphenol-A.

While such animal studies only provide “limited evidence” of bisphenol’s developmental risks, the group’s draft report stresses the possible effects on humans “cannot be dismissed.” The group is made up of scientists from the Centers for Disease Control, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Institutes of Health.

Khatter said the government’s options include an outright ban of the chemical, which he says may be unrealistic, to taking it out of production, or a substitution plan.

“What we hope they would do is work with the industry to get it out of the system,” said Khatter. “We just want them to get it done.”

Environmental Defence released a study earlier this year showing some of the most popular plastic baby bottles sold across Canada have all turned up “very significant” levels of BPA.

In the study, nine different polycarbonate bottles from three different major manufacturers were heated during testing and leached levels of the chemical that ranged between five to eight parts per billion.

BPA acts like the hormone estrogen and can alter cell function. Chemical studies on animals have linked the product to cancer and infertility.

“The biggest concern is that we are exposing ourselves to these foreign estrogens,” said Stelvio Bandiera, a professor of Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of British Columbia.

While he isn’t aware of any studies showing the impact of BPA in humans, Bandiera said that if animals are impacted by the chemical “it is possible it could produce the same effects in humans.”

However, Steve Hentges, executive director of the polycarbonate-BPA global group at the American Chemistry Council argues there is a “huge body of evidence” that shows the chemical is not harmful.

“(These studies) support the conclusion there is no risk to human health, particularly at extremely low levels,” which he says the water bottles contain.

Hentges called the retailers’ decision to remove the bottles “premature.”

“The science doesn’t support it.”

Health Minister Tony Clement wouldn’t confirm or deny Tuesday that Health Canada is poised to label BPA as a dangerous substance.

“I’m not here to speculate and certainly when we have something that has been determined, we’ll immediately get that out to the public,” Clement said.

“Our primary responsibility is the health and safety of Canadians. I believe we have to err on the side of caution, and I believe we have to let science dictate what our determinations must be.”

Source: The Toronto Star

Mar 31, 2008 04:30 AM
Martin Knelman

STRATFORD

A recent cover of The New Yorker magazine depicted Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton sharing a bed, both drowsily reaching for the same fabled red phone at 3 a.m. The image gave one hilarious answer to the question of who would be better equipped to handle the ultimate crisis call. Why couldn’t they share ultimate responsibility at the White House?

Almost as ludicrous, it strikes me, was the notion that several people could share the job of artistic director of the Stratford Festival. But that is what the festival announced, in 2006, with no joke intended.

To some of us, the only really surprising element of the news earlier this month about the acrimonious termination of the festival’s group directorate was that almost everyone involved professed to be surprised that it didn’t work.

To veteran witnesses of the Stratford wars, this experiment was always destined to end badly. Members of the festival board especially should have realized from day one this plan could never work.

According to Antoni Cimolino, the festival’s general director, what caused the crisis was that two of the three artistic directors – Marti Maraden and Don Shipley – had suddenly resigned. That left Des McAnuff, a man preoccupied with his globally successful musical Jersey Boys, as the festival’s sole artistic director – even though he is clearly not in a position to make Stratford a full-time job.

But contrary to the festival’s revisionist version of events, the evidence suggests there was nothing sudden about the decision of Maraden and Shipley to step aside, nor was it their idea to make the divorce public now, at the worst possible time, before the season opens, rather than wait until late summer.

Almost inevitably, the nasty “he said, she said” aspect of the saga is making Stratford seem even more viper-infested than the entertainingly dysfunctional family in August Osage County – a current Broadway hit likely to win the Tony for best play.

But beyond the backstage gossip lies an inconvenient truth about the cultural world: Gifted artists don’t necessarily get high marks in the category of “playing nicely together.”

You can’t run a major performing arts institution by consensus, any more than the presidency of the United States can work by job-sharing. An arts organization has a much better chance of soaring when it is in the hands of an inspired dictator, such as the late Richard Bradshaw of the Canadian Opera Company.

What troubled Maraden and Shipley was that they had no power to make decisions, and remained mystified why and how some projects got a green light while others did not. In retrospect, they could have guessed how things would turn out from the fact that for the first time in Stratford history the so-called artistic directors did not report directly to the board.

Instead, they reported to Cimolino – executive director under former artistic director Richard Monette, now given the title of general director. Clearly, the board is enchanted with Cimolino, who has never worked anywhere except Stratford, and has been rewarded with the longest-running contract in the history of Canadian performing arts.

That should have been a clue to Maraden, Shipley and McAnuff that despite their misleading title, they would be treated as associates or consultants rather than artistic directors. Two of them, as it turned out, were not willing to continue once that became clear. The third, I predict, will not be content to wear a hollow crown for long.

Consequently, this venerable institution – the largest not-for-profit theatre on the continent – has shown itself to be the banana republic of the cultural world.

Having written a book, A Stratford Tempest (1982), about an earlier episode of attempted suicide by this festival, I had a strong sense of déjà vu observing the current crisis. With its heavy-handed behaviour, the festival has humiliated itself, when with an intelligent public relations strategy it could have limited the damage and avoided acrimony.

Now, we are left to stare open-mouthed at the wreckage, wishing for a return of the TV series Slings and Arrows, which brilliantly satirized behind-the-scenes treachery at a high-toned classical theatre mismanaged by neurotics and bumpkins. Think what peaks of delicious absurdity that show could reach with the rich material of the current fiasco. Once more, dear friends, unto the breach.

mknelman@thestar.ca

Source: The Toronto Star

Riots over rising grain prices are ripping through the developing world and the United Nations warns there’s worse to come. Was Malthus right? Are we getting too numerous to feed ourselves?

Apr 12, 2008 04:30 AM
Lynda Hurst
Feature Writer

The warning bells are ringing, furiously.

This week, food riots paralyzed Haiti, with angry marchers outside the president’s palace shouting “We are hungry!” Five people were killed in the chaos.

In Egypt, a 15-year-old boy was shot and killed this week in two days of violence over food shortages. Last month, a two-week protest at government-subsidized bakeries ended with the deaths of 10 Egyptians in clashes with police.

Rice is the staple food of 4 billion people. But the prices for it, along with corn, wheat and other basics, has surged by 40 per cent to 80 per cent in the last three years and caused panicked uprisings in some of the poorest countries on Earth, from Cameroon to Bolivia.

The situation has deteriorated so swiftly that some experts predict the effects of a global food crisis are going to bite more quickly than climate change.

According to the World Bank, 33 countries are now vulnerable to social unrest and political instability because of food insecurity – and that has implications for all the rest. Major rice producers like China, Cambodia and Vietnam are already battening down, curbing exports to ensure supplies for their own populations. The Philippines, whose population has grown from 60 million to almost 90 million in 17 years, is warning rice hoarders they’ll be charged with economic sabotage.

Why is it happening? Was Malthus right when he said the world would eventually be too populated to feed itself?

The United Nations already provides food for 73 million people in 78 countries worldwide. But the planet is getting hungrier. At least 4 million more people are being added to the list, most of them living in high-density, Third World cities.

The new face of hunger – and thirst – is overwhelmingly urban.

It takes 1,000 tonnes of water to produce one tonne of food, but water scarcity is affecting supplies. And, as Lester Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute in Washington, has cautioned: “A future of water shortages will be a future of food shortages.”

The current crisis was ignited by a number of elements coming together in deadly tandem. Analysts say the most important one – the jump in global fuel prices – has triggered a chain reaction in the entire food-production system, from seed planting right through to the delivery process.

The world has been down this road before, of course. In 1973-74, OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) quadrupled the world price of oil, resulting in spiralling food prices and distribution snarls. The disaster led to a World Food Summit in 1976, but nothing was done to prevent it happening again.

Today’s crisis is even worse because biofuels, a factor unanticipated in the mid-’70s, has been added to the mix, says David Bell, emeritus professor of environmental studies at York University.

“A false environmental sensibility has led to a push on biofuel production and corn is the product of choice,” he says. “There’s been a significant diversion of crops away from food use.”

The corn needed to produce ethanol fuel has to be grown somewhere and when land available for food farming is converted, food prices are pushed up: “That’s what’s tripped off the food riots this time.”

And the environmental benefits of corn fuel, he scathingly adds, are “completely illusory.”

Throw in the new and exploding demand for meat in economically booming China and India and even more land is being converted – for cattle, and the feeding thereof.

Climate change is also making its toxic contribution. Major droughts have hit wheat-producing nations such as Australia and Ukraine, leading to a 30-year low in the world’s wheat inventories.

This week, John Holmes, the UN’s top humanitarian and emergency relief co-ordinator, warned that the number of global “extreme weather” disasters has doubled in the past two decades to 400 a year. What’s building in consequence of all these factors, he said, is a “perfect storm.”

“The security implications should not be underestimated …Current food price trends are likely to increase sharply both the incidence and depth of food insecurity.”

In other words, this week’s food riots may be just a foreshadowing of what looms ahead in the not-so-distant future.

It took all of human history for the world to reach a population of 2.5 billion in 1950. Half a century later, it’s risen to more than 6.5 billion. By 2030, it’s expected to reach 8.2 billion, and by 2050, a staggering 9 to 12 billion.

Can the world sustain that number of people?

A UN report says we are already living beyond the planet’s means – just as Thomas Malthus warned could occur. The early 19th-century British demographer and political economist believed population growth was exponential and man’s “struggle for existence” eventually would outstrip Earth’s capacity to sustain it.

Malthus’s thinking influenced Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory, but it also led to nightmare scenarios. In 1968, American biologist Paul Ehrlich notoriously predicted that by the 1980s, hundreds of millions would die because of overpopulation and subsequent lack of food. It didn’t happen. Not only did Ehrlich take a drubbing, but Malthus’s theory did, as well.

Critics have continually insisted that Malthus was too pessimistic. Humans would always find alternatives to resources that have been exhausted, they say, develop new technologies to improve crop yield.

But how far, asks David Bell, can substitution go?

After having dismissed Malthus, people are starting to talk about him again, he says. “His warning of a crash as a possible outcome may not be that far wrong. Ultimately, more mouths to feed is going to exacerbate political pressures. There will be more failed societies.”

Today, projections are that, by 2030, global agriculture/agribusiness will have to double its output – and use less water to do it. Fish as a food source? Every fishery in the world is expected to have collapsed within 25 to 50 years, says Bell.

The UN’s food program has launched an appeal to boost its budget from $2.9 billion to $3.4 billion. But that’s just to meet the demands of the hungry today.

What about tomorrow?

“We’re a selfish species,” says Bell. “But we’re going to have to do things differently.”
Lynda Hurst is a feature writer for the Toronto Star. She can be reached at lhurst@thestar.ca

Source: The Toronto Star

Apr 09, 2008 04:30 AM
Antonia Zerbisias

If you think that some of the Bush administration’s conservative politics – and Orwellian moves – in the U.S. can’t affect Canada, then you have some research to do.

Ten days ago at the University of California in San Francisco, librarian Gloria Won was running through POPLINE (POPulation information onLINE), billed as “the world’s largest database on reproductive health.” Maintained by Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University, and freely available to medical schools, health organizations and the public, it is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Won was stymied. Entering the keyword “abortion,” she kept getting the message “No records found.” Odd, because she had done a similar search in January and found thousands of scholarly and peer-reviewed articles on the subject. When she emailed POPLINE, database manager Debra Dickson replied: “We recently made all abortion terms stop words.”

Which means that, just like “the” and “and” and other words databases and browsers such as Google ignore, POPLINE would not recognize “abortion.”

Because?

“As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now,” explained Dickson, who suggested that Won search with “fertility control” or “postconception” instead.

George Orwell would have called this a “thoughtcrime.”

That’s because, on his very first full day as U.S. president in 2001, George W. Bush resurrected the “global gag rule,” which makes nongovernmental organizations certify that they “will not perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning” if they want USAID funding.

First enacted under Ronald Regan and briefly rescinded by Bill Clinton, it’s estimated that this restriction has cost the lives of some 70,000 women who have sought out back-alley abortions.

By late last week, censorship was the talk of the librarian community. And no wonder. This is the kind of thing China does when you search “Tiananmen Square.”

That’s when University of Waterloo library associate Sara Perkins tipped me.

“I mean, research being censored at the university level? I really didn’t think the U.S. could surprise me anymore,” Perkins emailed, echoing the views of David Dillard, a medical librarian at Temple University in Philadelphia.

It was on one of his librarian web- lists that the outrage spread, as researchers across North America speculated how much more information the administration will quash.

The record is stunning.

So far, the Bush administration has closed Environmental Protection Agency libraries. It has also dismantled PubSCIENCE, another publicly available scholarly database, because it competed with private sector services. And it severely weakened ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center), a storehouse of studies on education.

“There’s been so much suppressed information,” Dillard told me.

Even Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s dean was aghast when he discovered what had happened.

“I could not disagree more strongly with this decision, and I have directed that the POPLINE administrators restore `abortion’ as a search term immediately,” said Dr. Michael Klag in a statement last Friday, adding that his school is “dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and not its restriction.”

Yesterday Klag announced POPLINE was not ordered by USAID to drop “abortion.” Turns out that, in February, the government agency discovered two articles that did not fit its abortion “criteria.” When POPLINE staff found five more offending articles, they killed the keyword until some 25,000 more containing “abortion” could be checked.

Such is Bush’s America where you have to watch what you say – and where women have to watch what they do.

And so, rather than risk losing its funding, an organization dedicated to health research and medical information would send “abortion” down the memory hole.

But there’s more than a word at stake here – it’s an indicator of how, both in Canada and the U.S., women’s reproductive choices, are also threatened with erasure.

Antonia Zerbisias is a Living section columnist. azerbisias@thestar.ca. She blogs at thestar.blogs.com.

Source: The Toronto Star