Egyptians buy government-subsidized bread from a bakery in Cairo, Egypt. Egypt has spent $4 billion a year, or 1.8% of GDP, on its bread subsidization program in an attempt to insulate the 40% of Egyptians living on less than $2 a day from inflation. But prices continue to rise.

By Jake Caldwell, Director of Policy for Agriculture, Trade, and Energy at American Progress, and coauthor of “The Coming Food Crisis.”

Egypt faces daunting challenges as it prepares for broad presidential and parliamentary elections within a year. Ongoing volatility in global food prices will strain resources during this critical transitional period.

As the world’s largest importer of wheat, Egypt is acutely vulnerable to any surge in food prices. Wheat prices have risen 47 percent over the last year and other staples are rapidly approaching dangerously high levels.

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Part 2: Use irony, the twist we can’t resist

What with President’s day and the general failure of Obama to be the rhetorically inspiring leader that climate hawks had hoped for on global warming, I’m going to repost my multi-part series on Lincoln.

This is material that comes from my unpublished book on rhetoric and politics — which I am still hoping to get published (soon).  Also, I’m at Stetson University this week as a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow, discussing with the students How they can be most employable in a world of global warming and peak oil and food insecurity.  So you will notice a higher than normal amount of reposting and guest posting.

I think science has mostly told us what it can about the urgent need to act swiftly and strongly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and avoid destroying the planet’s livability for the next several hundred years (see A stunning year in climate science reveals that human civilization is on the precipice).

Yes, more observations and more analysis are valuable “” and I will keep reporting on the ever-worsening climate outlook “” but right now we need much more persuasiveness (see Why scientists aren’t more persuasive, Part 1).   As James Hansen says, we are still waiting for our climate Churchill.

One of Churchill’s defining characteristics was his mastery of rhetoric.  Indeed, at the age of 22 he wrote a brilliant, unpublished essay, “The Scaffolding of Rhetoric so.”  But this is the day we remember Lincoln, so I’m going to rerun my series on Lincoln’s mastery of rhetoric, the 25-century-old art of influencing both the hearts and minds of listeners with the figures of speech. If you have any doubt about the importance of the figures to Lincoln, consider this:

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Please add more news stories.  I’m on travel today.

Scientist finds Gulf bottom still oily, dead

(AP) — Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a top scientist’s video and slides that she says demonstrate the oil isn’t degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor.

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This is a 2010 piece that seems timely today given Obama’s efforts to jump-start high speed rail in America and the response by many conservative governors to block that effort (see “Passenger rail is not in Ohio’s future”: New GOP governors kill $1.2 Billion in high-speed rail jobs).

Guest bloggers Julian L. Wong and Nick Wellkamp walk us through China’s aggressive investments in high speed rail.

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