Would You Believe that Flood Insurance is Bankrupt?

Yes, the National Flood Insurance Program is nearing bankruptcy. And any Tom, Dick, or Harry that has a modicum of knowledge about economics could see it coming from a long way off. The National Flood Insurance Program is for places that are too great of a risk for private insurers. Why is this?

Because they flood all of the time. Ergo, private insurers are smart enough to realize that these are sucker's bets. And private insurers don't take sucker's bets. But the government (in the name of compassion) is more than happy to. Well for 40 years the NFIP has been insuring these homes that shouldn't be insured, and rebuilding them, and rebuilding them again, and sometimes rebuilding them some more. I had a friend in Houston whose parents lived in a flood prone plain. Their home was flooded (as in you are sloshing through water on the first floor) at least three times over a 10-15 year period.

For those who may live in the desert, there is a reason why we don't live in the ocean and have more experience exploring the moon than the seas. Water tends to have the nasty habit of destroying things. Even "waterproof" things. Floods have the nasty habit of bringing water (and whatever else is in the vicinity - mud, oil, gasoline, algae, mold spores, etc.) into places we don't want it. All that stuff tends to destroy things faster than water does. Here's an experiment for you. Take a wet washcloth (not dripping wet, just more than damp) and leave it on your 14 step coated (including waterproof polyurethane top coat) dining room table (or chair, or china hutch, etc.) overnight. Be sure to have your Mom or Wife or Significant Other's permission before you do it. Now imagine that the table is immersed in water, for three days, and there happens to be some nice solvents mixed in as well.

My wife and I bought one rental property that also happened to be in the a flood plain. To be more precise, the very back corner of the lot (which dipped down towards the gulley behind it) was in the flood plain. The building itself was at least 50 feet away from the flood plain. The place had never flooded (and didn't have a basement to flood first either) in the thirty years it had been standing. Two houses on one side of it did not have any part of their property in the flood plain. Yet, because of the layout of the building and the street, both of them were actually closer to the boundaries of the flood plain than my structure was. Yet, I had to insure my property with flood insurance.

Flood insurance cost as much (if not a little more) than property insurance. I am sure that the private insurer loved my property since there was little to no chance of it ever flooding. Yet the premium I paid was the same as a building that sat inside the flood plain. Insurance companies make their money based on risk. They try to figure out how much risk there is to action A, and then charge you X amount of dollars to cover that risk (based on the amount of people they insure that are going to engage in action A). They are a great barometer for things like safety since unlike a government dictate that says action B is safe, the insurance company has to put its money where its mouth is.

So, they will give you discounts for wearing a seatbelt (a safe action), but don't give a rat's rear end about how many guns you have in your home (something that is irrelevant to safety). If however, you do want to insure your guns against theft or damage beyond what your home owners insurance will cover (or your jewlery, or rare baseball card collection), then the insurance company may want to know how it is stored (i.e. in the closet = higher premium, case hardened multi bolt safe = lower premium)

For human induced risks (automobile accidents, home owners insurance), they have a lot of data and aren't worried about losing money on the deal. There is not some huge rash of car accidents that is going to bankrupt some company. For environmental related risks (huricanes, flooding, forest fires, etc.) they are more leary because the risk is less predictable. Hence, premiums are higher, policies are more restrictive and in some cases they just won't insure you (hence the NFIP). For crackpot induced risks (war and terrorism), they don't insure at all. Not because the risk is high (it is actually miniscule), however the localized costs are unpredictable and range from 0 to ginormous. Its a lot easier to predict how much damage a Category 5 hurricane will do to a major metropolitan area than what the next terrorist attack will be.

NFIP on the other hand, really doesn't care about the costs. They probably charge something similar to what a private company would charge for a less risky place. If they charged what the market rate was (i.e. what would be needed so that the NFIP was not underwater), then no one would be able to afford to live someplace like that. This is not rocket science, its risk analysis. Every successful business (insurance or otherwise) has figure this out long ago. Why can't our government (frankly, I don't care why not, I don't want the government in that business anyway).

Profit is an excellent incentive to determine the cost of risk. The insurance industry has been doing it successfully for centuries. Government hasn't done it successfully yet.

But then some people will lose their homes.

Yep, and then we won't have to pay to rebuild them over and over and over again. We sold that property after a year of holding it. There was no positive cashflow, the flood insurance basically ate it all up.

Environmentalism Gone Nuts!

At the office yesterday, we briefly discussed an issue with some equipment. It seems Mother Nature likes to continuously grow slimy lifeforms on said equipment which makes for a slip hazard when people walk on it. Solution: Use a biocide.

But not just any biocide, one that is safe for the environment. I heard this and my jaw dropped open. Herbicides kill plants (herb=plant, cide=to kill), pesticides kill pests (pest=pest, cide=to kill), insecticides kill insects (do I still need to spell it out?), fungicides kill fungi (pretty cool naming convention, huh?). So what do biocides kill?

Bio=life. That's right, biocides kill everything. There is no such thing as an "environmentally safe" biocide. That's why its called a biocide!

I kept my mouth shut. You can't win them all

Zero Impact Living

Zero impact living is the holy grail of many environmentalists. As with the mythical holy grail, it is an impossible goal. Unless of course you selectively define what zero impact living is. Using linen bags, and non-packaged food is great, and if it makes you feel good, ok. Go ahead and do it. But returning your milk bottles or egg cartons back to the store you bought them from is just passing on the responsibility of creating waste.

I read a book called "Garbageland" which was written by someone who was willing to buy into the whole recycling, no waste concept. After doing some investigation, it was found that somewhere around 40-60% of the stuff that is "recycled," actually goes to the landfill. So taking your egg cartons and milk jugs back to the store you bought them from, probably results in some of them being sent to the landfill. In other words, you didn't create zero waste, you just let someone else throw it away.

Why do we throw away so much stuff? Because it costs more to recycle it than it does to make new stuff from virgin materials. There are exceptions - metals primarily. My guess is every municipal recycling program is operated at a loss. Even with free raw materials, the price for re-used milk jugs doesn't cover the cost of sorting, cleaning and processing. Even with oil at hundreds of dollars a barrel. Copper wire on the other hand is a different story.

So do I make a conscious effort to "Live Green," heck no! I fill my recycling container up every week because otherwise I would have to pay extra to put it in the regular trash. I alternate between bagging my grass clippings and leaving them on the lawn. I have a garden, but haven't been very successful in the last year, except for brocoli. I make sure I always get plastic bags because they are used to line our garbage cans (there's great health benefits to not having bits of trash, rotted food, or poop lying around your house, it smells better too!).

I have been to farmer's markets in three states, only the one in Texas had competitively priced produce compared to the supermarkets. In the end, I would rather buy my produce from a company that ships it in on a truck from California than the farmer who lives 2 hours away that drives it in to the farmers market. Why? Because it is cheaper when shipped 80,000 lbs at a time across the country, rather than 1000 lbs at a time from down the road. (And those mass produced vegetables with all of their chemicals sure do look a lot better. Plus, in blind taste tests, people actually prefer the mass produced chemical laden produce. Go figure, we've progressed.)

When did this war of man/nature begin? Do we fault the Beavers for making dams and messing up the waterways? So why be upset when mankind builds a road to bring cheap produce all over the nation? The world is a much bigger place than we think, and in spite of the large sounding numbers as to the amount of trash we produce, it isn't that much and doesn't take up that much space. So, feel free to throw away that cheeseburger wrapper and not feel guilty. I certainly don't. And if you won't, then the next time I go to McDonald's I'll get two cheeseburgers and throw away a wrapper for you. Heck, I might even be kind enough to throw out the cheeseburger too and let one of Mother Nature's creations see what they are missing!

Revisiting Cash for Clunkers: The Law of Unintended Consequences

A short while ago, I wrote about the Cash for Clunkers program and why I wouldn't be participating. Now that the program has blown through $3 billion, it is time to start looking at the unintended consequences. Actually, the unintended consequences should have been looked at before, but I don't really expect Congress to do that.

The program's goal is to get gas guzzling vehicles off of the road and replace them with high MPG vehicles. Sadly, the car market (like any other market) is a complex system. Complex systems are highly dependent on their initial conditions, and slight variations in those conditions can cause vastly divergent results. So let's look at some of the initial conditions that affect the car market:

Bailout, layoffs, and bankruptcy of two of the largest automobile manufacturers

New government mandates of MPG that manufacturers need to meet over the next 20 years

Increasing unemployment in the country

Government spending that has increased the deficit 400%

Forecasts of peak oil imminent with no widespread replacement technology

People spending less and saving more

Dealerships closed down by pseudo-government

Control of hiring/firing and pay by czars

Recent gas prices at all time highs

Recovering stock market

Population that is growing at a slower rate than in the 60-90s

Population that is living longer than ever before

This list is not meant to be exhaustive. There are thousands of initial conditions that affect the car market. Only one or two of these were considered when this program was conceived without regard to how they would affect the rest of the market. Let me go through some numbers.

The program (with the extra $2 billion) is going to help put 750,000 new cars on the road. The major negative with this program is that all 750,000 of those vehicles are going to be destroyed. That means the used car market (about 41 million vehicles a year) will have 750,000 less used cars, or about 2%. Unfortunately, this is going to be magnified because the 2% of $2000 cars are not going to be traded in for $4000 cars, and 2% of $1000 cars are not going to be traded in for $2000 cars, and 2% of people that were going to buy the $1000 cars are not going to be able to because of availability.

Except that the scenario above would only happen if cars of all values are traded in. So let's do a little mental exercise. First, we know that the used car market is roughly 41 million. Second, we can probably safely assume that 95% of the cars turned in were worth less than $4500. Any car that was worth more, we can just chalk up to the Stupid Tax. So that is 712,500 cars worth less than $4500 are now off of the market.

Next, I needed to figure out how much of the 41 million cars are part of the under $4500 market. So I went to my friendly neighborhood car dealer and checked out his used car inventory. It would only allow a lower limit of $7000 so I used this. Two. A total of 2 used cars under $7000. How many in his inventory overall? 63. 3% of his inventory is under $7000.

Now in all fairness, this was a dealer attached to several big name companies. There are plenty of mom and pop shops and lots of people sell their cars themselves whenever a dealer isn't going to buy it. I looked in my local newspaper. The ratio here was much better, 6 out of 10 were under $4500. And there were 118 listed. So if I assume that there 75% of the used cars are sold by dealers (there are at least 5 big dealers in my area with 60+ used cars a piece, at 3% under $4500 rate) and 25% are sold through newpaper, mom & pops, etc (with a 60% under $4500 rate), then roughly 17% of used cars sold are under $4500. Or 7 million.

The dilemma then becomes that we are taking 712,500 of the 7 million away in one year. A 10% drop. So what was on the surface 2% of the entire market (all used cars), is actually 10% of the focused market (sub $4500). To take away 10% of the supply (in basically a month's time) is definitely going to put price pressure on the market. Used cars that sell for less than $4500 will now be more expensive. Unfortunately, the laws of supply and demand are not linear. Some economists have proposed that the ratio is as high as 10:1 (for each 1% decrease in supply, there is a 10% increase in price).

While this may be a bit of a stretch, I feel confident that we will see used car prices increase for the near future. All car prices. Because if sub $4500 increase say 50%, then cars above $4500 will also increase due to relational value (if the $4500 car is now worth $6000, then the $6000 car must be worth $7500, et al). This is going to squeeze the people at the bottom (the poor) the most, by pricing them out of a better car (or any car for some).

The program is a huge waste of resources. All of the new cars will will lose value to depreciation in the first month which will more than offset the $4500. All of the cars turned in will be scrapped making them worth only a fraction of their value. Since 10% of the sub $4500 fleet is removed, there will be a decrease in the used/rebuilt parts for these cars since they aren't being recovered.

The lost energy cost is most troubling. In all 750,000 cases the cars were already manufactured, and while their mpg might not live up to some government ideal, the energy cost of replacing them with a new more fuel efficient vehicle (i.e. the amount of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere by the manufacturing process) far outweighs what little CO2 is pumped out from burning the extra gasoline. In other words, we just pumped more CO2 into the atmosphere than we saved. And destroyed $1-2 billion dollars of wealth to boot.

Whenever the government tries to mess with the free market they always screw it up. Doesn't matter if it is Republicans or Democrats, both think they are good at playing God. They aren't. And they hurt the poor more than anyone. Cash for Clunkers is a perfect example (or imperfect example to be precise).

A REAL Wild Animal Kingdom

Back in May my wife and I went the Wild Animal Kingdom near San Diego. I had never been there before and it was fun. I like to see animals. Looking back now I realized I hadn't blogged about the great idea I had. Robb's blog reminded me of it.

One of the things they pride themselves on in the Wild Animal Kingdom is helping to reintroduce species back into the wild. After hearing about this idea for the umpteenth-jillion time, my wife casually asked me, "I wonder how many of those animals died in the first year back out in the wild?" A great business opportunity struck.

In zoos, the animals are pampered. They get 3 square meals a day, plenty of water, toys to play with, doctors, dentists, and are completely free of the stresses of being eaten alive. Even the predators have it easy. We were rather disappointed when we hiked up the trail to see the tiger at feeding time. They had set out a large meaty bone on a stand, and some birds were picking at it. I imagined them opening the gate and the tiger coming roaring out to devour the bone (maybe taking a bird with it). No such luck, he meandered around and even though there was nothing else resembling tiger food anywhere in his pen he occupied himself with some plant that was no where near the food. Oh yeah, and he certainly looked like he could afford to lose a few pounds.

The Wild Animal Kingdom costs $35 to get in and then they have some tours to get up close to the animals (and feed them) for an additional $75. We didn't do those. The zoom on our camera got up close enough to count their nose hairs. So let me tell them how they could really make some money (if you are a PETA lover, stop reading NOW! Death and carnage follow.)

First, I like the set up, they have large pens that span dozens of acres and usually have multiple animals that would normally be together in them. So this is a good start. I would however expand this by about a factor of 10. There would be one large central pen (on the order of 1000-2000 acres). This would be the prey pen - so gazelles, zebras, elephants, giraffes, etc. Around this pen on slightly higher ground would be the predator pens. Predators usually don't live together so no need to combine them, although if they hunt in packs, then you would need to have a pack - not a single specimen. The key here is there are only chainlink fences (or some other suitable see through barrier) between the predators and prey. The predators have to be able to do reconnosance.

Next, all of the best plants and water source are nearer to the predator pens than the center. There should be enough food for the animals to survive, but not neccessarily enough to get fat. The key here is you want to raise the prey to be cautious while eating and also foster a healthy dose of competition for the food sources. The predators don't get any food.

Now the fun part comes. Predators don't eat everyday, some of them go for weeks between meals. So the real money maker is scheduling the release of the predators into the prey pen for a hunt. The prey pen needs to be big enough that there is a challenge for the predator (but also contained enough that visitors can see - maybe even put an observation tower right in the middle). So the prey is allowed to hunt, kill and eat whatever it likes. The key would be to have a constant supply of prey and keep the predators just hungry enough that they are motivated to catch something. Then you could always have a supply of scavengers in the prey pen that would do the clean up work.

The major environmental advantage is you would have both predator and prey more adapted to the "real" world than a typical zoo provides. It wouldn't be perfect, just better. So when they are released into the wild, they would have a fighting chance. From an economic standpoint, I would be willing to pay $75 or $100 to see a tiger take down a gazelle or a giraffe kick the snot out of a lion while protecting her baby. I might even be willing to pay $200 for that. The park could charge based on what hunt was going on and what time of day (i.e. if the lion hunt is in the afternoon, morning rates would be a base of $35, but after noon, the rate shoots up to $100). No readmittance allowed (that way the people that come in the morning are forced to stay in the park all day and spend money if they want to see the lion get something). The Wild Animal Kingdom could make a fortune!

Now some people will object to this, they don't want to see animals killed. But this is nature. And if the goal of your organization is to reintroduce animals back into the wild, don't you think we should give them the skills so that they have a fighting chance? Sad as it may be, the young, old, and infirm all die in disproportionately higher numbers. That is nature. That is being environmental.

Defacing the Bible - The ULTIMATE sin ... NOT!

OK, I am probably going to catch some flak for this one. I read this news story and laugh. Now before you come to my house and put a stake through my heart, let me explain. I am not laughing that people are defacing a Bible, I am laughing that people are getting upset over it. Now let me go on a bit.

To believers, the Bible is the word of God. To non-believers, the Bible is anything from a collection of ancient Semitic myths to pure poppycock. That sentence could be turned around for just about any religious book. There was uproar about a soldier at Guantanamo flushing a copy of the Koran in front of prisoners (turned out it never happened), so they have the same problem. I saw a news story about a Mormon missionary who was extremely upset when someone was tearing apart a copy of the Book of Mormon in front of him, so they have the same problem. I bet there are some Scientologists who would be upset if they knew that you threw your copy of L. Ron Hubbard's works in the trash. Relax, no one is going to hell for tearing up a book.

Let's examine what is special about our religious books. If we believe that they contain the word of God, does that mean we should reverence them? No, the paper and leather cover itself is not sacred, even the ink that is used to make the words is not sacred. It is the words, the ideas, the doctrine that is sacred. The Bible you tote around with you did not come from Heaven. It was probably printed by Simon & Shuster or some other such publisher. If you elevate the book itself to holiness and can allow nothing to defile it, are you then not setting it up as an idol? And didn't Jehovah write some words on a couple of stone tablets about those?

So why do people destroy religious books to make a statement? Merely because it will tick some people off and they can get a lot of publicity about it. So the simple way to stop it from happening is to quit getting so ticked off about it. If I remember correctly the Bible has been printed about 7.5 billion times since that first one off of Gutenberg's press. It ain't going anywhere. In fact if we burned all of the Bibles in a power plant, we would be able to produce enough electricity to power the entire nation of North Korea for one year (completely truthful but totally useless fact).

When the NEA was funding artists who put crucifix in a bottle of urine or a scatological version of the Virgin Mary, I was upset. Not because of the treatment of religious symbols, but because some people would attempt to pass this off as art. And others would believe them. And the government would support it. I would have been just as mad if the item in the jar of urine was a screwdriver or the scatological display was of an iguana.

I've long ago realized that people don't care diddly about what you think is holy, so make sure you understand what is holy. If you find some object as being holy, be prepared to have it ridiculed and made a public mockery.

The information age has got to put a quandry on some of these people's minds. Let us assume that you find consider the Bible holy (I mean the actual paper it is printed on). Does that mean if you pull up the Bible on a website it, then your computer is holy? So if you leave the website and then empty your internet cache are you destroying the holy word of God? What if you download a copy to your Palm an then decide later that you need that room for Solitaire instead? Have you committed a sin by writing over the Word?

Let me tell you how I handle it. I had an old copy of a Bible when I was a kid. When I was baptized one of the gifts I recieved was a new set of scriptures. I threw the old Bible away. Didn't even give it a second thought. The scriptures I have now are almost 20 years old. I recently bought a new set but I haven't thrown the old ones away (even though they are pretty trashed. It isn't because I think they are holy. It is because I have 20 years of markings and notes that I don't want to lose, and am too busy right now to transfer them to something else. But one of these days I may just say, to heck with it, part of reading religious books over time should be that your understanding of them grows and so the next 20 years will give me further insights beyond what my old scriptures contain. At that point I will just chunk them.

Would I burn them? If I had a wood burning stove I would. When we lived in a house with one we burned lots of things (including books - my kids are brutal to books). Christmas was a nice warm time in our home, wrapping paper ignites quickly! Besides, throwing it in the trash is sort of a waste. One of the things I believe is that God has given us dominion over the earth and it is up to us to take care of it (that does not mean radical environmentalism though). So burning it would be a way to garner just that last bit of use from the tattered paper. Good imagery too. Incense was burned to invoke the image of prayers ascending to heaven. By burning your well-used Bible, you would be symbolically sending it back from whence it came.

Would I take it too a shooting range? Again, if it has lived out its usefulness, why not? I prefer phone books because they are plentiful and the colored paper is sort of like confetti when hit with birdshot.

By this point some may ask if I am being serious or facetious? Let me be perfectly honest. I am being very serious. I don't worship the Bible or any other object. If you take offense at my view of how people should view religious books, be careful, I may burn one on your driveway just to see your reaction - not very Christian of me, but then again, I ain't perfect.

Saving the Environment One Door at a Time

Last year after the floods came through town, a young idealist came knocking on doors looking for donations to the "Save the Iowa River" group. Huh? I was absolutely floored at the time. So much so that I was unable to wring this kid's neck and show him the devastation that just occurred and let him know that the Cedar River already did a number on our town and I wasn't going to waste a cent trying to save the carp in the Iowa river. He got off lucky with my wife saying "No Thanks." The kid today wasn't so lucky.

Let me begin by saying that I was an idealist once, for about 2 months in 7th grade I was going to help save the world. I had joined the debate team and the topic was renewable energy. My partner and I decided that we would argue on the side for renewable energy, because solar, wind, and geothermal were the "new" thing and were just about to make a breakthrough into the mainstream. Like I said after about 2 months, I found out that it was all a pipe dream, not only that, I also found that the stuff we were using wasn't near as bad as "they" said it was. Coal, oil, and nuclear (yeah, this was when Chernobyl was still fresh on people's minds) were actually what had caused the quality of life on this earth to increase more in 100 years, than it had in all the previous history of mankind. (Not, only that, but solar and wind turned out to not be as "green" as they are touted.) Twenty years later, solar and wind are still the "new" thing and about to make a breakthrough in the mainstream.

Since that time, I have spent a great deal of time learning about energy and food (the things that make life possible). I have worked in the oil industry and the nuclear industry and seen the good and bad (and I will say there is far more good than most people could ever imagine and far less bad than people believe). Which brings us to tonight. A knock at the door.

I was brushing my teeth and my daughter went and looked and came and told me that she didn't know who it was. So I answered it. Yes, it was an idealist (probably out of school for the summer) working for a non-profit to save the environment. He started off on his spiel about how they are working to eliminate the use of coal and oil. Normally, I would stop them right here and tell them no thanks, but I was in a mood to see if this kid new how to think (that might be from reading several idealist blogs of people who don't know how to think). So the conversation went something like this (I am in maroon, he is in green):

"So you support the nuclear plant up the road?"

"Well, that is one form of energy that is a little better than coal and oil, but we are trying to get more solar and wind developed. And do you know that with all the pesticides and fertilizer we are polluting our rivers?"

OK, first rule of trying to convince me has been broken, don't change the subject. In my mind I was slightly irritated that I didn't get to discuss about base loading and peak loading for energy production, a comparison of the land areas required for equivalent power from a solar plant or a wind farm, the pollution that is produced from "fossil fuel" plants compared to nuclear plants compared to the production of solar cells, or the relative costs of energy and what would happen to peoples lives as their energy costs went up. But he wanted to talk agriculture, so I bit.

"So we shouldn't produce food?!"

"No, but we can do it without using so many chemicals."

"Do you realize how many people would die of starvation if we weren't using chemicals? Do you really think we could produce as much food as we do without chemicals?"

"Of course, we are in Iowa, we're the breadbasket."

"Do you know why we are the breadbasket?"

"Because we have the best soil."

"Right, we have the best soil, and by adding the right pesticides and fertilizer, we have yields that dwarf what we could do otherwise."

"I think we could produce enough food without them."

"And there you are wrong. We have had an agriculture society for 7000 years. Not until the last 100 years or so have we had food production outpace population growth by 2 to 1. That was when we seriously started to use chemicals to aid in farming. What you are advocating would cause 2 billion people in this world to starve to death. Do you want to kill 2 billion people?"

"Well...frankly there are already people starving."

"Are they starving because there is no food?"

"No..."

"So, why are they starving?"

"Because there are problems with the distribution of the food."

"Right, why are there problems with the distribution?" He's catching on, there may be hope yet.

"I don't know."

"Because of governments. Some of them are so corrupt and power hungry that they will allow their people to starve so that they can accumulate wealth. We send the food to their governments and they hoard it or sell it to others for a profit, and their people starve. Ethiopia and Somali at one time could produce food to feed their people. Then they had got a corrupt government who helped to destroy the agriculture base and the people starved. The same thing is happening right now in Rhodesia or Zimbabwe. The government has run all of the farmers out of the country and what once was a food exporting country is now starving. People are more important to me than saving the environment. I am not going to support policies that purposely try to starve 2 billion people."

I was going to talk about Victor Borglum and how people like him have saved countless lives. But, the idealist had had enough, thanked me for my time and left. There was so much more I wanted to pound into his young skull. Hopefully, he actually critically looks at the policy he is advocating and decide whether it is something he wants to support.

I get real upset about people who spout off nonsense like converting everything over to organic farming or the like. If you want to support an organic farm, be my guest (I have my own vegetable garden that is fertilized with compost - but I don't pretend that it is going to feed the neighborhood, let alone my household). Whether you believe the world is overpopulated or not, the fact remains there are 6 billion people in this world and we should do our best to feed every one of them. Organic gardening ain't going to cut it. Unless you can find 2 billion people that are willing to die so you can feel good about the water that runs by your house, then just keep washing the pesticides off of your apples. I don't mind a few drops of chemicals in the thousands of gallons of water I use each year, last time I checked, our life expectancy is quite a bit better than when all the rivers were "pristine" (except of course for the occasional rotting corpse of a buffalo that fell in).

The other thing I get hacked at is when industrialized idealists start prattling about needing to save the rainforests in third world countries. Their idea is to petition the government or in the extreme case go down and tie themselves to the trees. Here is a clue, people in third world countries that are living a subsistence lifestyle don't have any other choice than to cut down the rainforest to make charcoal or firewood, or raise a few head of cattle or grow some crops for one season. They are worried about one thing and one thing only - putting a little bit of food in their bellies. Some of them spend upwards of 50% of their waking time getting food for the day. I spend about 20 minutes at work and 10 minutes at the grocery store to get enough food for my family for one day. And I'm not that different from most Americans in this regard.

Do you know what will save our rainforests, wildlife, or the environment? Wealth and personal property, although some may argue that they are one and the same. Up until the middle 1800s, there wasn't much of either in the world (in spite of the rooms of Aztec gold). And would you know it that every civilization treated the environment "horribly." There were no groups that were at one with nature. The only reason that the whole world wasn't wiped out was because the population was so small. Then the industrial revolution began and the majority of people in industrialized countries were not employed to produce food. Machines took over for the work that man did and mankind was able to invent and experiment like never before. Wealth was created and some countries even allowed private property (ownership of land by the individual). People now had time to actually care about the environment.

The forests in the US (while having been decimated since the arrival of the Europeans) began to make a come back like never before. Logging companies plant more trees each year than are harvested. The amount of forested land in the US is on an increase and some estimates are that there is more forested land now in North America, than there was when Amerigo Vespucci set foot on it 500 years ago. Because we don't worry about where our next meal comes from, we have the time to "save the environment." Because we have private property protections, we have been able to generate great wealth and have the money to "save the environment." Somehow, people believe that a third world country can change their ways in the matter of one summer. It only took the USA about 150 years, and that was with ideal conditions.

So no, I will never support some organization that comes knocking on my door to raise money or awareness for any environmental cause. I say, get out there and do something (besides begging for money). I respect organizations like Habitat for Humanity, Doctors Without Borders, and the Salvation Army. They actually try to help their fellow man. If you think we need to get rid of pesticides, then go to a good Ag school and learn about agriculture, then start experimenting and find what will work that won't cause the death of 2 billion people. Don't come and try and tell me that some method we have already tried for 7000 years will do it, when it didn't before. And if you want to build a windmill or a solar plant, educate yourself on energy production and distribution. We didn't get the way we are by some accident. We have 7000 years of people tinkering and thinking, and 100 years of serious tinkering and thinking, so unless you provide convincing evidence to the contrary, I am going to stick with the status quo.

I continue to look at the evidence for both sides, and the idealists have always come up short. Its
OK, I was one once to. It's a phase everyone goes through. Just don't get stuck in it too long. We need all the productive people in the world we can get, otherwise, we're never going to be able to pull places like Bangledesh and Chad out of misery.

LED Nightlights

I was excited today when I went to WalMart. They had LED nightlight bulbs for $4.96 for a pack of two. This was a great price since we go through nighlights like candy at our house. So why did I buy them? Because I wanted to become 'Green'? Not even close. I bought them because LED lights are finally econmical (at least the nightlights are). A four pack of incandecent bulbs would have cost me $2.96. They would probably last me 6 months. With a 4 watt bulb the filaments are so thin that they regularly get broken from just jostling them. The new LED bulbs are only 1.4 watts and have a plastic case (that isn't vacuum sealed) so there is no worry of breaking. Plus, they come with a lifetime warranty.

But wait, aren't they 'Green' anyway? Uh maybe. I don't care. They cost less money over their lifetime which is the driving factor for me. By buying them I feel good. They were bought at WalMart (which will help thier millions of stockholders), the bulbs were probably made in some Vietnamese sweatshop by a 10 year old girl making $2.00 a day for 12 hours of work. This is good for her too. If it weren't for WalMart, she would probably be working 16 hours a day just to get enough food for herself. Worse yet, her family might have sold her into prostitution. Not only that, but because the LED lights were cheaper (over the lifetime cost) I will now have more money to buy other 'cheap' foreign products that end up providing a better life for people here at home and abroad. I can't wait until regular LED bulbs are economical.

Now, since they are labeled as 'Green' I will have to do something to make up for it. Perhaps I can rev my engine some more at stoplights so that my carbon footprint doesn't decrease. Actually, I have several 'Green' products: rechargeable batteries, natural gas fireplace, energy star appliances, LCD monitors, Low-E windows, etc. In each and every case, I use these for economic reasons and don't give a hoot about their 'Green' attributes (although if one looks at the total resource demand of the product including manufacturing and disposal a lot of green products aren't that green, and some are downright toxic). Some 'Green' products that I don't buy are: hybrid vehicles and organic foods. In each of these cases, they don't make economic sense.