The SoapBoxers

The year was 1999 and I was living in Illinois.  My parents came up for a weekend visit.  At the time, I was driving a 1988 Ford Taurus.  Among its many positive features was the fact that it was paid off in full.  I had poured a bit of money into it over the few years I owned it, but it had been a pretty reliable car.  It had about 130,000 miles on it, but I liked it.

On this particular weekend, Dad noticed that the car seemed to not be driving very smoothly and asked when I had last replaced the spark plugs.  That would be never.  When it comes to cars, I pump gas and check the fluids and air pressure.  That’s about the extent of it.  Dad didn’t want me spending a lot of money getting the plugs replaced, so he decided to do it himself.

It was raining that weekend, and I didn’t have covered parking, so we sought a covered space for the job.  A municipal parking garage fit the bill.  It would keep us dry, even if the lighting was pretty bad.  Actually, since we parked near an exterior wall to maximize the available light, it didn’t even keep us completely dry.  It wasn’t the greatest environment for the job, but Dad persevered and got the plugs changed, with some (but not much) help from me.  He was 76 at the time; I was an able-bodied (but mechanically challenged) 24 year old.  The Taurus was back in tip top shape.

The very next weekend, I headed back to Iowa to visit some friends.  As I came around a curve on westbound I-74, I encountered another group of friends – a small herd of deer gathered on the interstate.  I managed to elude all but one of the deer.  Although the car was still mechanically sound, the amount of body damage rendered it a total loss. 

The time and effort my dad spent replacing the plugs was completely wasted – but it was never forgotten.

If you wish, share a memory of your own father.

Yesterday’s story, In Defense of Art, features a main character who defends her artwork from a critical colleague.  Today, I’ll break down the creative process involved in writing the story.  Spoiler alert: I’m going to talk about the entire story, including the ending.  So if you haven’t read the story, you might want to read it first.

As is often the case, the end of the story came to my first.  In the end, the heroine’s revolver twice lands on empty chambers before finally hitting a live one, allowing her to kill the antagonist.  Why the first two failures?  To build suspense, of course – and to allow the attacker to show himself as even more of a jerk.

After composing the final scene mentally, I ran into a block that lasted for a few days.  What could be important enough to force the main character to respond with deadly force?  An attempted sexual assault was a possibility, but I’ve been thinking an awful lot about The Cell Window lately, and just didn’t want to go in that direction again.  (Don’t have a copy of The Cell Window yet?  You can buy the audio book or print version – which contains many other stories – at the Hyrax Publications Store.)

I considered having the main character be a zoo keeper who stumbled across someone killing ducks by throwing rocks at them (which, unfortunately, happened in this area a few years ago), but I didn’t think it was very realistic that a zoo keeper would be packing heat.  Eventually, I settled on the main character being an artist who operates her own gallery.

I immediately began painting the painter in a positive light.  I softened her image by having her paintings be peaceful nature scenes, and gave her pink bunny slippers to wear.  The antagonist, on the other side, was an impressionist, and his fashion accessory was a maul.  I could have made this a sledge hammer (there’s not a great deal of difference between the two), but maul is a compact word, and also has a second meaning.  As a verb, maul means “to injure by a rough beating, shoving, or the like” according to dictionary.com.  This makes the weapon sounds more foreboding.

Now that I had the main plot of the story figured out, I needed to pick names for the characters.  Quite often, I’ll use the names of friends, especially for positive characters.  I have a new co-worker named Kailey, and she slid into the role of the artist.  The last name of Bell was picked because I like bells – they make nice noises.  A positive word for a positive character.

But what about the name of the antagonist.  Where did I come up with Sylvester?  Well, I have Warner Brothers to thank.  Yes, he is named after Sylvester the Cat, the perpetual tormenter of Tweety Bird.  Barnes is simply the twisted version of a public figure’s name.

For someone who likes to speak as much as he does, one would think that a tragedy such as this could define his Presidency and he would jump at the opportunity. However, it took 58 days for Obama to meet with BP. It took 9 days after the incident for Obama to say a word. He didn’t give a hoot until his poll ratings started to suffer and the people in the Gulf started asking questions. And without his teleprompter, he’s been heard saying he is going “kick someone’s ass” and “make BP pay”. Obama please, you’re no Tony Soprano.

I recall when Katrina hit; there was outcry that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

Well, how about this. Barack Obama doesn’t care about white fisherman. The BP CEO just needs to stop talking to the media all together. His “little people” comment was quite unnecessary. And they wonder why our ancestors left their country.

People were outraged that Bush didn’t do enough. I’m pretty sure if he could have talked to the CEO of hurricanes, it wouldn’t have taken him 58 days to do it. Even James Carville has had enough…and he’s a Democratic strategist!

We are witnessing the demise of both the gulf coast and Obama’s presidency. What this crisis demands, what this country needs is LEADERSHIP. The time for action was last month—or two months ago.

Obama is just as qualified to stop this oil gusher as he is to be president of the United States. The job of President of the United States really shouldn’t have been left to someone who needed “on the job training”.

November cannot come soon enough. And I think a bumper sticker I saw last week was accurately correct. It read “Obama = Carter 2.0”. Maybe we can hope for a one termer come 2012.

Every now and then, you’ll see a news story about franchisees who are up in arms about being forced to sell a cheap burger at a loss.  The situation is typically something like this: the burger is being sold for 99 cents, but the cost is $1.15 when you account for ingredients, labor, rent, etc.

I’d feel sorry for the franchisees – if it wasn’t for the fact that they are wrong.

Let’s break the situation down a bit further.  Let’s say that the Kosmo Burger sells for $1.25.  The raw ingredients for the burger (meat, cheese, bun, etc) cost 50 cents, and fixed costs (such as rent) run $500 per month.

If we sell 1000 burgers per month:

Revenue = $1,250 (1.25 X 1000)
Variable costs (ingredients) = $500 (0.50 X 1000)
Fixed costs (rent, etc) = $500
Total costs = $1000
Total cost per burger = $1
Profit = $250

Let’s say that Kosmo Korporation’s executives force the franchisees to sell a “Junior Kosmo Burger” for 75 cents.  Ingredient costs are 40 cents.  The fixed costs remain at $500, but are now spread across the flagship Kosmo burger as well as the Junior Kosmo.  The restaurant sells 200 Junior Kosmo burgers for the month, in addition to the 1000 Kosmo burgers.  The numbers for the Junior Kosmo break down like this:

Revenue per burger = 75 cents
Variable costs = 0.40 per burger
Fixed costs per burger = 0.42  (500 / (1000 Kosmo Burgers + 200 Junior Kosmo Burgers))
Total costs per burger = 0.82
Loss per burger = 7 cents

That looks bad, but let’s look at the combined numbers for both burgers:

Kosmo Burger Revenue = $1250
Junior Kosmo revenue = $150 (0.75 X 200)
Kosmo Burger ingredient costs: $500
Junior Kosmo ingredient costs: $80 (0.40 X 200)
Fixed costs: $500
Total revenue: $1400
Total costs: $1080
Profit: $320

Wait a second.  Profits have jumped $70 from the example where we were selling just the Kosmo Burgers.  How did we add the unprofitable Junior Kosmo Burger into the mix and make more money?

The problem is that allocation of costs is an artificial construct used to estimate profitability.  It’s a quick and easy method to use to estimate profitability, but it doesn’t actually reflect the reality of the costs.  Really, the true cost structure is:

Costs = 500 + 0.50K + 0.40J

(K = Kosmo Burger.  J = Junior Kosmo Burger)

It is possible to make a profit by selling the Kosmo burger at any price higher than 50 cents and the Junior Kosmo burger for any price higher than 40 cents.  You simply need to hit a high enough volume of sales to offset the $500 of fixed costs.  You’re not going to go broke selling Junior Kosmo burgers at 75 cents.

A few related notes:

• The cost structure used in the example is artificially simplistic.  You will also have expenses like labor, which is a somewhat fixed cost.  Very few fixed costs are completely set in stone – they are simply fixed “within the relevant range”, to use the words of my Cost Accounting professor.  Even facilities costs will vary if you outgrow your location.  The labor costs will stay the same until productivity approaches 100%.  At that point, you’ll need to hire more staff.  But if your workers are only about 50% productive, there’s no marginal labor cost related to an increase in customers – as you’re currently making inefficient use of those employees.
• The low cost items can have an effect on profits if they cannibalize sales from existing products.  In our example, the Kosmo Burger has a gross margin (revenue – variable costs) of 75 cents, while the Junior Kosmo has a gross margin of 35 cents.  If I normally buy a Kosmo Burger but decide to buy a Junior Kosmo instead, the restaurant makes 40 cents less in gross margin.
• Many people who buy the cheap menu item will also buy a high profit item (such as a soft drink) as well.  Thus, it’s important to pay attention to the impact of the total purchase on the bottom line.

(Still confused about the math in the example and wondering how a 7 cent loss on the Junior Kosmo turned into an increase of $70 in profits?  It’s because we’re spreading the fixed costs over a broader base – the fixed cost allocation for the Kosmo Burger would also be brought down to 42 cents.  If you’re still off by $4, it’s due to rounding).

Our Canadian writer, Tyson Turner, returns after a hiatus.  This week he writes a sports-themed column as he fills in for Johnny Goodman, who is himself on a short hiatus (don’t worry – Johnny will be back soon).

I was pleased to see Chicago win the Stanley Cup, dumping Philly in 6. As someone from Ontario, I’ve seen both Ottawa and Toronto battle with Philly the last few years and have built up quite the hatred for that team. However, I am still in the minority in my hometown. Kenora is the hometown of Philly’s captain, Mike Richards. On top of that, nearby Dryden is the hometown to the Flyers star defenseman, Chris Pronger.

It was amusing driving through town, seeing local businesses with signs such as “Mike vs. Chicago, Friday at 7pm”. Too bad people here don’t really realize Mike Richards probably doesn’t care at all about most of them, just signs a cheque to pay for an addition to the local arena and everyone thinks he is a hero. I guess it just bothers me to some extent, knowing that a lot of his family are pretty unpleasant but people just turn the other cheek since he is a famous hockey player. Are we really that shallow?

Onto the World Cup

So now that hockey is over, what is there to watch? The Blue Jays are off to a surprisingly decent start, but baseball isn’t exactly my favourite sport to watch. So how about soccer? I played the game for many years, but it is hard to get behind it with Canada absent. I blame our climate on why our national soccer team struggles years in year out. Most of the country has about 4-5 legitimate months of playing outdoors, and that’s it. This in contrast to Mexico and the Central America, who can play all year round. How else can I justify us losing regularly to Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, etc.?

The odd statistic on top of this is the fact that there are more registered Canadian youth playing soccer than hockey; yet we are the world’s best at hockey, but are currently ranked #63 in the world for soccer. Perhaps our development program needs some work too. But in any case, I hope the tournament is a big success for South Africa, and kudos to FIFA for thinking outside the box and giving Africa a chance. And as for me, cross your fingers that Canada will be given the chance to host the tournament, because otherwise I don’t think you’ll see us there for a long time.

Just over a week ago, the Israeli armed forces boarded several ships trying to run the blockage of the Gaza Strip.  During that operation, several people on board the ships were killed.  The media has gone to great lengths to describe these people as activists and humanitarians.  I will not put any designation on them at all.  It is unfortunate that they died.  It is especially unfortunate if they were truly trying to provide humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.  The result of this activity has been outrage at Israel.  My question is why?

The Gaza Strip is home to Hamas, a group that has declared war on Israel.  Israel has imposed a blockage in response to that war declaration, and announced this to the world.  The people on board the ships announced that it was there intention to run that blockage, and that they were willing to take the risk, even hoping that there would be a conflict, to harm Israel.  They chose not to allow a peaceful search of the ship to determine if there were any weapons or military supplies on board.  They chose to ‘interfere’ with the Israeli military.  They lost.

The Gaza Strip has a functioning government that receives funding from the United Nations as well as charities from around the world.  Why then the need to run the blockade?  This aid is allowed into Gaza, the only items restricted are weapons.  Why can’t the Palestinian government care for its own people?  They certainly have enough funding for weapons.

There are people who claim that the blockage is illegal.  Who is the arbiter of legality when a nation is at war?  During WWI, the allies imposed a blockage on the Central powers.  Prior to 1918 the United States was a neutral and provided aid to both sides.  Herbert Hoover (prior to becoming President) organized humanitarian aid missions to the people of Europe behind the front (most notably Belgium).  This aid was searched twice, once by the British to make sure there were no military supplies going to the Germans and once by the Germans to make sure no military supplies were going to the partisans behind the lines.  Were the allies engaged in an ‘illegal’ blockade?  They were at war, therefore they did what was necessary to win, but still allowed humanitarian relief.  The Israelis are doing the same thing.

There are various videos running around purporting to show what really happened.  Each side is only showing what makes them look like the victim.  I personally will wait for the final report – possibly next month on PBS in a Frontline report.  Until then, I lean towards feeling sorry for the loss of life, but little else.  When you go out looking for a fight, lose, then whine about it, I have very little sympathy.  I certainly hope that this incident does not result in Israel dropping the blockade.  That should remain in place until the government of Palestine renounces attacks on Israel and starts behaving like a nation, not a terrorist organization.

By the way, did any one else notice the attack by armed Palestinians into Israel on the same day?  I heard it once on Fox News and once on NPR.  No report on the number of dead civilians or the outrage in the United Nations over this attack.  Of course, they are at war.

A quick note to the readers – you may begin seeing less content on the weekends.  Health-related issues and other life priorities have caused several writers to be unable to write on a regular basis.  The end result is that I have been writing up to 5 articles per week.  This can be a bit of a drain, and it is probably not viable long term, considering other projects underway and competing life priorities.  In the future, the weekend articles will be a bit less rigorous.  Most weekends are going to have a weekly recap on one of the days – a series of short blurbs about the news of the week.  The other day will feature a question of the week.  I’ll ask a question, give my answer, and solicit responses from readers.  On occasion, I’ll run a fiction story in place of one of these articles.  It might sound a bit counter-intuitive, but many times I can write a fiction piece faster than a non-fiction article of comparable length.

So, without further ado, comments on the news of the week:

Joran van der Sloot, the prime suspect in the disappearance and presumed murder of US teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba in 2005, confessed to the beating death of 21 year old Stephany Flores in Peru.  Flores’ body was found in a hotel room in Peru with indications that she had been beaten to death.  If police had been able to find more evidence to tie him to Holloway’s appearance, Flores would still be alive today.  After van der Sloot’s arrest, it was revealed that the FBI had been investigating him for an plot to extort money from Natalee Holloway’s mother.  Van der Sloot claimed to have information about the location of Natalee’s body.  My hope is that the Peruvian justice system will mete out a swift and severe punishment.

I recently stumbled across an email from March of 2009 suggesting that Ford might be a good stock to buy.  The gist of my argument was that Ford’s domestic competitors were in dire straits, and that Ford would be able to swoop in and steal market share, especially from folks who are adamant about buying American.  On the day the email was sent, Ford stock closed at $2.76 per share.  At the close of the day on Wednesday, the share price was at $11.28 – more than 4 times the March 2009 level.  It’s pretty rare that I give stock tips (particularly since I’m a big fan of diversified portfolios), but I’m a bit disappointed that I didn’t take my own advice.

Another stock that might be a good buy right now?  BP.  In the last couple of months, the share price has been sliced in half.  Yes, the cleanup will be costly and the lawsuits will be numerous.  However, bear in mind that this is a company with $100 in equity (not assets, but actual equity).  Even after shelling out a hefty amount of money related to the cleanup, BP should emerge on solid financial footing.  Even a post-tax cost of $30 billion (containment, cleanup, and compensation to affected parties) would leave them with net assets of $70 billion – and most independent projection are pegging the cost at less than half this amount.  The stock currently has a PE ratio of 6 – and they pay substantial dividends.  Of course, this ignores all ethical and environmental concerns – obviously, you may choose to ignore BP stock for this reason.  I’m not defending BP – I’m just suggesting that from a pure financial sense, the investment might make sense.  Note: I am not a financial advisor.  This tip is provided for entertainment value only.  Invest at your own risk – I am not liable to losses that may result from investments in BP stock.

Stephen Strasburg lived up to the hype on Tuesday night, striking out fourteen batters and allowing just four hits against the Pittsburgh Pirates.  Strasburg and two relievers combined to strike out 17 Pirates.  On the flip side, Pirates pitchers recorded just a single strikeout in the game.  Strasburg faces off againt the Indians at noon today.

Ubaldo Jimenez struggled a bit with command of his pitches during rainy weather on Friday night, allowing 5 hits, 5 walks, and 3 runs through 6 innings.  It was good enough to allow Jimenez to notch his 12th win of the season.  Jimenez typically pitches into the 7th inning, but this game was called because of rain after six innings.  Ubaldo is 12-1 through his first 13 starts, with a 1.16 ERA.

Iowa State’s Lisa Koll (the best athlete you’ve never heard of?) won the 10,000 meters and 5,000 meters at the NCAA track meet.  Koll became the fifth fourth woman to ever achieve this historic double.  She conserved her energy in the 10K on Wednesday night, and it paid off in the 5K, as she ran away from the field – winning by 30 seconds (an enormous margin) in the 11th fastest time by a collegiate woman.  Koll will be signing with a shoe company soon, and will be setting her sights on the 2012 Olympics.

When Betty arrived at her husband’s grave for her weekly visit, she was stunned at what she saw.  Next to Henry’s grave was another stone.  Someone named Eli Hart had been buried in her plot!  She and Henry had purchased the dual plot decades ago, with the plan to place two small marble stones atop the graves instead of a massive dual headstones that some folks seemed to prefer these days.

It seemed that those idiots at the cemetery had messed up some paperwork and this Eli fellow was buried in her plot!  Betty was mad  enough to spit nails.  The plots had cost them a pretty penny, and the funeral home had charged a small fortune for Henry’s funeral three years ago.  She wouldn’t begrudge them the money if they would do a competent job.  Who had ever heard of burying someone in the wrong spot?  Betty was going to storm into the funeral home the first thing Monday morning and raise holy hell with Samuel Clinton.  This Eli Hart fellow was going to have to be dug up and moved somewhere else.  After 50 years of marriage, Betty was damned if death was going to separate her from Henry.

Betty took a moment to regain her composure before beginning her time with Henry.  She decided that he didn’t need to be bothered with this nonsense about the grave mixup, so she didn’t bother to mention it to him.  Betty caught Henry up with all of the news in their family.  Their son David had finally been made a partner in his CPA firm – after many years of having the company drag their feet.  David and Amy’s daughter Melinda would begin her residency soon.  Melinda was going to make a great doctor some day.

Their youngest grandchild, Preston, was six months old and changing before her very eyes!  He was a happy baby, always laughing.  Betty remembered when his mother was the same age.  The smallest thing could set off Sarah into a half hour laughing fit.

The Cubs were off to a rough start again this year.  She hated to be the bearer of this bad news, but she also knew that Henry would want to know about his beloved Cubbies.  He had been the eternal optimist, always saying that “next year” would be their year.

Betty felt herself begin to get tired and knew that she had to wrap up the visit.  She said her goodbyes to Henry and prepared to leave.

The following day, two cemetery employees were performing routine maintenance at the cemetery.

“Jeff, take a look at that stone.  Grass clods from the mower are obscuring half the name.  Fix that, will you?”

The other man knelt in front of the stone and cleaned away the grass clods to reveal the name ELIzabetH ARThur.  As he glanced at the grave site, he was surprised at how rough it still looked.

“Betty has been dead for almost a year now.  Shouldn’t the ground be settled by now, Terry?”

“Maybe she rises from the dead each night and returns to her grave before the break of dawn.  That’s probably why the site appears to be disturbed, Jeffrey.”  Terry laughed at the absurdity of his response.

Marina pursed her lips and applied just the right amount of lipstick.  She took a long look at herself in the mirror.  She was wearing an absolutely stunning little black dress and had spent hours getting her hair and makeup just right.  She was ready for her big date.

Marina was going to be meeting her boyfriend for the first time in real life.  She had meet SportzNut99 several months ago on a blog devoted to their hometown Cardinals.  Marina – also known as CutiePie14 – had thought that his comments were smart and funny, and they quickly became friends.

They soon began conversing via instant messaging, beginning with innocent chats about sports before evolving into rather serious flirting.  Before long, love was in the air.  In a playful effort to keep some mystery in their relationship, they kept some personal details private.  Marina had no idea what this guy looked like.  In fact, she didn’t even know his real name – he was just SportzNut99.

At last, they had decided that this night could wait no longer.  They would finally meet in person and have their first official date.  They had talked about the date during their last online chat.

SportzNut99: How will we find each other?

CutiePie14:  Let’s play hide and seek.  I’ll hide and you seek.

SportzNut99: Sounds like … fun.  You’re definitely worth the hunt.

CutiePie14: You should be looking for a hot brunette in a sexy little black dress.

Marina took a last glance in the mirror before heading out the door.  The butterflies were starting to flutter, but she knew that a drink would calm them down.

A few minutes later, Marina entered The Den.  As she made her way toward the bar, she felt the eyes of every man in the bar following her.  It seemed that her assessment of this outfit was spot on – it was the perfect dress for her first date with SportzNut99.

“Marina,” yelled Mick from the other side of the bar, “you are looking hot, babe.  What can I get for you?”

“Double Dewars, on the rocks.”

“That’s my kind of girl,” replied the bartender.

Mick quickly brought the drink and added it to her tab.  Marina took a quick glup of the scotch in an attempt to gain some liquid courage.  First dates always made her look so nervous.

Marina grabbed what was left of the drink and found a nice, secluded table far from the front door of the bar.  SportzNut99 was going to have to make an effort to find her – Marina was going to play at least a little bit hard to get.

Marina wondered what SportzNutz would be like.  She was caught up in her daydreaming and didn’t hear the footsteps as the man stopped behind her.

“Hey baby, guess who?” came a voice from behind her, as hands quickly covered her eyes.

It took a half second for Marina to recognize the voice.

“Michael?” she exclaimed, as she jumped up and spun around to face her equally stunned brother.

How’s that “Drill, Baby, Drill” thing working out for you now?

In the popular 1984 movie Ghostbusters, there’s a scene where the mayor of New York City is trying to decide if he should trust the Ghostbusters or not. On one hand he has a bunch of popular whackos who claim to be able to deal with the rampant, bizarre paranormal events plaguing his metropolis. On the other hand, he has his adviser from the EPA saying the Ghostbusters are con artists and should go to jail. He asks Bill Murray what happens if he’s wrong, and Murray replies, “If I’m wrong, nothing happens! We go to jail – peacefully, quietly. We’ll enjoy it! But if I’m *right*, and we *can* stop this thing… Lenny, you will have saved the lives of millions of registered voters.”

I have the same sort of feelings about climate change. Despite an overwhelming number of credible scientists (over 80%) believing that both global warming is real and human actions have caused it, there is still rampant doubt in political circles that it exists. Fox News commentators were often heard muttering that if global warming is true, how could there be such prolific blizzards this past winter? (Fox News commentators are invited to read about the first law of thermodynamics) Let’s look at this from a skeptic’s point of view. If they’re right, and global warming is just a big scientific error or big liberal hoax, we should ignore efforts to curb fossil fuels and not worry about that South American rainforest. Exxon-Mobile, BP, Haliburton, and other major corporations involved in oil have a vested interest to be able to find and sell as much oil as possible. Strange that such large, powerful corporations would need to spend so much on lobbying when they already receive such massive tax breaks from the US government.

What about the flip side, though? What if environmentalists are wrong? If they’re wrong and climate change doesn’t exist, we’re spending lots of money to find alternative energy sources, specifically focusing on natural gas, solar and wind power as well as electric cars. We’ve already spent over a trillion dollars on the war in Iraq – had we used that money to fund research in alternative fuel, would we even need the middle east? Let’s face it, we didn’t really go into Iraq to find weapons of mass destruction. When it was revealed that those weapons never existed, the Cheney administration changed its tune and said we went in there to topple a horrible dictator and bring democracy to the region. That’s not a bad thing, mind you, but we have no more right to do that than Russia does to come and make this a fascist nation. We went into Iraq to gain money and oil, and at what cost? Thousands of US lives, tens of thousands of other lives are gone. Many more people horrible wounded and crippled for life, all for what? Oil. If the environmentalists are wrong, we’ll be spending less money and probably no lives than the Iraqi war to come up with new technology that may help ween us off our dependence for oil, and a lot of scientists will go down in history as having been wrong.

But if environmentalists are right, and climate change is real and we ignore it, what’s at stake? Predictions are pretty widespread on this. The amount of polar ice melting from just a few degrees of overall planetary atmospheric warming is enough to raise ocean levels by anywhere from a few inches to a few feet. A few feet would leave many of the most highly populated areas of the Earth under water. 634 million people live in coastal areas within 30 feet of sea level. About two thirds of the world’s cities with over five million people are located in these low-lying coastal areas. You think crowding is bad now? Let’s sink the bulk of Florida and see how bad it gets.

Despite recent examples of what happens when our addiction for fossil fuels goes bad, notably the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, party lines have for the most part not changed. Louisiana is right now, as I type this, having hundreds of miles of coastline covered in oil and sludge and thousands of animals are dead. Thousands more will die. The entire fishing industry in the Gulf of Mexico is at risk of collapsing. You’d think that the governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal (R), would be outspoken against this. Not with oil and gas industries as his 2nd biggest contributor. He’s already called for President Obama to reconsider the ban on deep water drilling, yet every day thousands of more gallons of crude oil pour out of the broken well and pollute the water. Sarah Palin continues to speak across the country that this is an example of why we should drill more with more safety regulations, not less. The Exxon Valdez disaster happened in her home state of Alaska, and is still having an impact on Prince William Sound, over 20 years after the event. Conservative activist judges have multiple times reduced the fine Exxon received after the event to the point where Exxon has paid less than 1/10th of the original court ruling. BP still hasn’t capped the spill, do you really think they’re going to do the right thing and pay for all the cleanup and all the damage this spill has caused and will cause?

There is a Native American saying that goes, “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” Despite this, there is a widespread mindset that this current trend of climate change is just a rare but not unexpected anomaly in the history of the planet. If that line of thinking is right, we don’t have anything to worry about, right? Our children will simply have to work harder to live comfortably because they just happen to be in the wrong time. But what if this isn’t just part of the long-term trend? Do you really want to be leaving your kids a trashed-up planet because you wanted $2.50 a gallon gas for your huge SUV? Do you really want your kids grandchildren asking them, “what was Florida like when you were young?”

An OPEC exec once said, “The stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stone and the oil age won’t end because we run out of oil.” I’m praying he’s right and it ends because we pull our heads out of our collective butts and find a better alternative to fossil fuels.