G8 leaders feast while the world goes hungry

SKYROCKETING FOOD prices are pushing tens of millions more people into destitution, and the signs of environmental destruction loom ever more plainly around the globe.

But at the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Hokkaido, Japan, on July 7-9, the heads of the world's most powerful governments failed to do anything more about these crises than mouth empty rhetoric.

The G8 leaders, of course, expressed their "deep concern" about the rise in global food prices. But as for a solution, the best they could come up with was a call for "countries with sufficient food stocks to make available a part of their surplus for countries in need, in times of significantly increasing prices and in a way not to distort trade."

In other words, no solution at all.

On his way to the summit, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown took the opportunity to scold ordinary British families, saying they should be doing "more to cut our food waste" in order to "get food prices down"--as though he was a parent telling a child to eat everything on their plate because "there are starving children in Africa."

"[W]agging a finger at better-off individual eaters in a world economy constructed to make both waste and hunger inevitable is totally off the mark," activist Francis Moore Lappé, cofounder of the Institute for Food and Development Policy, noted in a statement.

"Brown reinforces the dangerous myth that a shortage of food is the reason food prices have jumped, resulting in 50 million more people hungry last year...Today's hunger crisis results from anti-democratic power that chose to put agribusiness interests in [biofuel] production ahead of citizens' interest in eating."

There were steps the G8 leaders could have taken--curb commodity speculation; mandate no-strings-attached global food aid donations from the world's wealthiest countries; repeal agricultural subsidies and tariffs in advanced countries that drive up prices on staple goods; slow the production of food-derived biofuels that have added to the rise in prices for crops like corn and soybeans.

But they stuck to the same empty words and warmed-over free-market proposals. As Robert Weissman, director of Essential Action, wrote:

The G8 leaders call for opening and deregulating financial markets, even as it is clear that financial deregulation has helped create the current global financial crisis...The G8 leaders call for completion of the Doha Round negotiations at the World Trade Organization, aiming to further deepen reliance on a global food trading system that has driven the poorest people off their land and undermined developing countries' ability to feed themselves.

The G8 leaders also call for more aid for food-importing, poor countries--to be delivered through IMF lending facilities that typically require countries to adopt more of the market fundamentalist mandates that have driven people off the land and undermined governments' capacity to assist the poor and pursue expansionary economic policies.

And the insult didn't stop with inaction, either. After discussing their concern for the world's poor, the G8 leaders engaged in an orgy of conspicuous consumption that would have made Marie Antoinette blush--including an 18-course "theme" dinner titled "Blessings of the Earth and Sea."

As writers for Britain's Guardian newspaper described it:

After discussing famine in Africa, the peckish politicians and five spouses took on four bite-sized amuse-bouche to tickle their palates. The price of staple foods may be soaring, but thankfully, caviar and sea urchin are within the purchasing power of leaders and their taxpayers--the amuse-bouche featured corn stuffed with caviar, smoked salmon and sea urchin, hot onion tart and winter lily bulb.

Guests at the summit, which is costing [$476 million], were then able to pick items from a tray modeled on a fan and decorated with bamboo grasses, including diced fatty tuna fish, avocado and jellied soy sauce, and pickled conger eel with soy sauce.

Hairy crab Kegani bisque-style soup was another treat in a meal prepared by the Michelin-starred chef Katsuhiro Nakamura, the grand chef at Hotel Metropolitan Edmont in Tokyo, alongside salt-grilled bighand thornyhead (a small, red Pacific fish) with a vinegary water pepper sauce.

They have told their people to tighten their belts for lean times ahead, but you feared for presidential and prime ministerial girdles after the chance to tuck into further dishes including milk-fed lamb, roasted lamb with crepes, and black truffle with emulsion sauce. Finally, there was a "fantasy" dessert, a special cheese selection accompanied by lavender honey and caramelized nuts, while coffee came with candied fruits and vegetables.

Leaders cleverly skated around global water shortages by choosing from five different wines and liqueurs.

THE G8 summit also failed to take any real action to combat climate change, which is already threatening lives around the globe.

In a statement, the summiteers pledged to "move toward a carbon-free society" and set a vague target of cutting global carbon emissions by at least 50 percent by the year 2050. But several went out of their way to prove the hollowness of their commitment to a "carbon-free society."

Gordon Brown, for example, chartered the jet normally used by the Dallas Mavericks basketball team to get to the summit. The plane flew, empty, to London to pick up the prime minister and his entourage for the flight to Japan.

And as he was preparing to leave the G8 summit, George Bush was overheard by reporters smirking to his fellow world leaders: "Goodbye, from the world's biggest polluter."

As for the emissions agreement itself, the New York Times reported that it "did not say whether that baseline would be emissions at 1990 levels, or the less ambitious baseline of current levels, already 25 percent higher."

The pledge isn't nearly enough, say environmental groups, considering that scientists say current emission levels will need to be cut by at least 80 percent from 1990 levels in order to have a real impact on man-made climate change. As the Times added:

Mentions of mandatory restrictions on emissions were carefully framed. Caps or taxes were endorsed where "national circumstances" made those acceptable. The statement urged nations to set "midterm, aspirational goals for energy efficiency."

The Group of 8 statement also pledged to increase aid to help developing countries improve energy efficiency or cut their vulnerability to climate risk. But developing countries have noted that, in the past, those pledges have gone unfilled.

In addition, the target is a "global cut" that doesn't require higher cuts for more pollution-heavy countries like the U.S. It's no wonder, then, that several developing countries, including China and India, refused to agree to the target.

George Bush hailed the "target" as "significant progress," but as environmental groups pointed out, the agreement isn't worth the paper it's printed on.