Middle East Oil Consumption and Exports

CIBC world markets chief economist Jeff Rubin discusses with Erin Burnett and Larry Kudlow of CNBC.

In small town America, some say Ethanol boom will hurt more than help the environment

This tiny western Kansas town, with its single-story frame homes that sidle up to neatly plowed fields, looks like just the place for one of the new ethanol plants that have been turning up across the Midwest.

Many of the 400 people around here certainly could use the jobs and money the plant would bring in. But others are worried about how much water would be needed to run the plant and grow the corn that is the base for most U.S. ethanol and requires more water than many other crops.

Water Rights for Sale in Alberta

The Athabasca River, running north from the Fort MacMurray area, has dropped several metres in just the short time that the tarsands operations have begun. If this five fold expansion happens-- or even if the current pace remains-- the agricultural farmers, never mind the nations who actually own the water or the marine life who live in it, will lose out completely. As this is only just beginning it is highly notable that the Athabasca River was once clear, yet the people who live along it now consider it poison.

Biofuels Will Make China, India More Thirsty: Andy Mukherjee

If water were a globally traded commodity, with unmet demand in China and India reflected in its price, the world might shed its newfound craze for biofuels.

It is bad enough that some of us need ethanol distilled in Scotland to lubricate our evenings.

Global food supply near the breaking point

The world is now eating more food than farmers grow, pushing global grain stocks to their lowest level in 30 years.

Rising population, water shortages, climate change, and the growing costs of fossil fuel-based fertilisers point to a calamitous shortfall in the world's grain supplies in the near future, according to Canada's National Farmers Union (NFU).