Nik Blosser, Celilo Group Media

“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
—Stanislaw Lec, Polish poet, 1909-1966

Australia is to blame. First, they have a record drought that reduced their commodity crop yields by percentages never seen before. This caused worldwide commodity prices to increase, which affected the cost of, well, just about everything.

Even the Great Harvest Baking franchise across the street from my Portland office, which earlier this year so proudly announced the use of organic wheat in their bread, reversed course two months ago and stopped using it.

The only way to tell organic wheat was out was one day the fine print on the chalkboard above the register was quietly changed. But even though it’s Australia’s fault, biofuels get blamed for everything nowadays, including the cost of corn tortillas in Mexico and pasta in Italy. The fact that oil is at or near $100 a barrel and transportation costs can be a significant portion of commodity pricing has nothing to do with it, of course. (Full disclosure: I own stock in a biofuel company, Pacific Ethanol.)

But this is just the latest in a long series of smear campaigns against sustainable industries, some orchestrated and some unclaimed. And that brings me to my personal list of trends, opinions and random thoughts for the year ahead.

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