06/04/08 Guessing on Gas & Blaming the West

Guessing On Gas & Blaming the West plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. Oil futures speculation is to blame for at least a quarter of the run-up in oil prices. That's according to witnesses before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee - who added a farm bill energy futures-speculation fix may have missed its target. According to experts like Mark Cooper at Consumer Federation of America - Americans are paying ransom at the gas pump to unregulated oil futures speculators of 25 to 30-percent COOPER: $40 for the physical cost of producing crude, the economic cost. $40 for the cartel tax that OPEC and the oil companies put on us and $40 for speculation, so that 2/3rds the current price is  simply put  baloney. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe defended land policies blamed for devastating his country's agricultural sector, asserting at a U.N. food summit Tuesday that the West was trying to cripple the nation's economy. He is blamed for the economic collapse of a country once considered a regional breadbasket and Zimbabweans increasingly are unable to afford food and other essentials. Mugabe nonetheless contended that his policies of redistributing land taken from large farm holders were "warmly welcomed by the vast majority of our people" and the sanctions aim to "cripple Zimbabwe's economy and thereby effect illegal regime change in our country." Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Lacy Gray. It was so difficult only an 11th grader could figure it out. How to make plastic bags have a faster decomposition rate than the estimated 1,000 years; simple, just figure out what microorganisms in nature actually make plastic disintegrate and enhance the natural process to speed up decomposition. Daniel Burd is the young man from Canada who decided to approach the plastic bag disposal problem as part of his school science project. With the determination and enthusiasm of youth, Daniel set out to pin point the exact microorganisms necessary for decay and actually managed to identify two strains of bacteria that operate as a team to do just that. Daniel also states that industrializing the whole process should be easy, "All you need is a fermenter, your growth medium, your microbes and your plastic bags." Could it really be as simple as that? Could the nation's top scientists not see the forest for the trees? I'm sure hoping that's the case and if so that Daniel Burd receives the kudos and compensation that he so rightly deserves. Thanks Lacy. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.