poor

The World Bank president, Robert Zoellick, yesterday unveiled a $1.2bn (£606m) rapid response fund to help developing countries deal with the food price crisis. Speaking from an African development meeting in Japan, Zoellick said the fund was part of a $2bn general increase in World Bank spending on agriculture.

A barrel of oil costs twice as much today as it did a year ago, and experts say prices could go higher. According to new data from the Philippine government, 4 million Filipinos slid back into poverty in 2006 as a result of rising oil prices and a higher cost of living. In addition, Chinese demand for oil is increasing by 15 percent a year,

Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC);  testifies before the House Select Committee on EnergyIndependence and Global Warming on the impact of climate change on the least privilaged.

State Energy Assistance Directors call for increased funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). They describe the struggles of low-income residents of their states facing sharply rising energy prices.

Traditionally viewed as separate issues, the discussion will explore the interrelations between the climate crisis and extreme poverty and solutions common to both.How should international efforts to eliminate extreme poverty and to solve the climate crisis be coordinated to improve the chances for success in both efforts? Former Vice President Al Gore and activist/rock star Bono discuss.

Representatives from states across the U.S. speak in a conference cosponsored by the National Association of State Energy Officials about their challenges facing a winter with rising heating and fuel costs, particularly trouble low-income Americans will have paying heating bills with diminishing grants available at the same time of rising heatingcosts.

Sen. Coleman speaks in favor of America's Climate Security Act (ACSA), which is projected to reduce total U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions,particularly the provisions of which that help shield low-income Americans from the costs of climate change solutions.

Panelists outline proposals from the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities designed at directing a percentage of allowances from a carbon cap-and-trade toward low-income Americans to hold them harmless from increased costs associated with climate change solutions.

"If you start to fuel cars with crops," says Ed Matthew of Friends of the Earth, "you are instantly putting the world's one billion starving people in competition with the world's one billion motorists. It's as simple as that." Strong stuff.