The Dance of the Ten Problems

If ever there was a time for the Dance of the Ten Problems, it is now. The problems that I solved during the first two Dances pale in comparison to the troubles we face now. At the end of 2006 I solved the problem of the U.S. occupation in Iraq by suggesting that we sell the U.S. military to the oil companies. The end of 2007 saw me addressing the weak U.S. dollar with a two-pronged approach consisting of (1) printing large amounts of foreign currency; and (2) pegging the dollar to marijuana.

This year's problems include the housing market crash, the stock market crash, the credit crisis and the fantastically large national debt. (Have you noticed, by the way, that the budget deficit that our government creates is referred to as the "federal budget deficit," but the cumulative total of all of these deficits is referred to as the "national debt"? It's like while they are spending it, the money belongs to Congress, but after they've spent it all and then some, the debt gets transferred to the "nation," like we're all in this together. Nice.)

There are so many economic problems that I have lumped all these matters together into a single problem called "money troubles" (not to be confused with the 1994 movie starring Harvey Keitel, Monkey Trouble). This allows me to put into the hat a number of less pressing issues, like global warming, the eradication of the rain forests and whatever is happening to Kathleen Turner's face.

----------------Dancing interlude--------------------

Okay, all of the problems have fallen to floor but one. And the remaining problem is (drumroll) ... the depletion of our non-renewable natural resources!

Boy, this is a tough one, but I'll give it a try. The first thing to do, of course, is to state the problem. The fact is that the earth has only a limited supply of certain resources, such as oil, coal, water, iron, and Dakota Fanning. The more we use of these things, the more expensive they get, until we we are forced to seek some sort of alternative.

One course of action, suggested by conservationists, is that we pursue alternatives to these resources so that we don't use them all up. The conservationist's strategy, in other words, is to avoid running out of a resource by pretending that we have already run out of that resource. For example, we could stop burning coal and turn instead to a far more expensive resource like solar power, in order to avoid a nightmare scenario in which we run out of coal and are forced to turn instead to a far more expensive resource like solar power. It's sort of like a fire drill, where the whole world acts on a hypothetical emergency -- except that once everyone is outside, the conservationists boards up the building so that we won't rely on it any more.

The problem with this solution, as anyone who has ever played make-believe on the school playground knows, is that the more people are involved, the harder it is to get them to go along with whatever imaginary game you're playing. Even if you get seventeen other kids to pretend that the jungle gym is a submarine ten thousand feet under the ocean, you know the eighteenth kid is going to come along and pretend to be doing the backstroke around the lot of you. You can't just pretend that building solar panels makes more sense than burning coal and expect the rest of the world to go along with you. In fact, if anything, they'll be more likely to burn coal because thanks to you decreasing the demand, the price of coal has dropped. The end result is that just as much coal gets burned -- although you do get that warm feeling that comes from making an unnecessary and pointless sacrifice in an effort to improve the situation.

No, there's only one way to get everybody in the world to act like they've run out of a particular resource, and that is to use up all of that resource. My solution to the problem of dwindling natural resources, then, is to keep using the resources until they are all gone. If my calculations are correct, this should greatly increase the incentive to find alternative resources.

You may scoff at this solution, but I argue that it is eminently sensible. In fact, it makes more sense than the conservationist strategy. Conservationists want to stop using coal so that there will still be some coal left for the future -- a future in which coal is worthless because we're not using it for anything. My strategy, on the other hand, is simply to force people to find alternatives to coal by using up all of the coal.

It's not even really necessary to use up all of a resource. We just have to use enough of a resource to make it prohibitively expensive to use any more of that resource. For example, eventually we'll have mined all the readily accessible coal, and good quality coal will become harder and harder to find. Eventually producing coal will become so expensive that we'll have to find an alternative -- like oil. But then oil will get more expensive, and we'll have to find an alternative to that. And on and on, until all we have left are ridiculously expensive and impractical resources like solar and wind power.

This is where my plan and the conservationist's plan converge. Eventually, with either plan, we end up using expensive and inefficient alternatives to our preferred resources. The conservationist's plan is based on everyone on earth buying into a shared delusion that we've run out of resources, whereas my plan is based on everyone agreeing that, yep, there's no more coal. My plan may take a little longer, but it saves money in the mean time, and it also has the advantage that it will actually work.

The only way to ensure that everybody will use "alternative" fuels is to make them no longer alternative. It will be like when mainstream rock stations started playing the hell out of Nirvana's "Teen Spirit" and the phrase "alternative rock" lost all meaning.

So how do we bring about a situation in which our primary resources are so expensive that we have to turn to alternatives? Well, first we must use as much of these resources as is economically feasible. We should avoid reducing consumption, as this behavior will delay the depletion of our natural resources.

Another potential problem area is recycling. An efficient recycling process could potentially add decades to the longevity of many resources. Fortunately, though, most recycling schemes are so inefficient that they actually consume more resources than they save, and are therefore a boon to the resource depletion advocate. Not all recycling programs are equally effective resource drains, however, and you should be careful to do proper research to determine which programs are most likely to further the goal of resource depletion. This is more difficult than it sounds, because most recycling advocates haven't bothered to determine whether their recycling programs actually do any good. If you tell someone running a recycling program that you're trying to ensure that the disposal of your garbage burns as many resources as possible, they will probably just stare at you in confusion.

A good rule of thumb is that if a recycling scheme seems to make economic sense (for example, bringing your soda cans to an aluminum recycler in exchange for money), it probably isn't very effective at depleting natural resources. If, on the other hand, a recycling scheme is inconvenient and/or heavily subsidized by the government, then you've most likely happened upon a scheme designed to waste as many resources as possible. Subsidies are usually only necessary when the processes of separating, processing and transporting materials use more resources than are being saved by the program. If, on top of this, lots of people are trying very hard to make you feel guilty for not participating in the scheme, you've hit the resource depletion jackpot.

The beauty of my plan, of course, is that it is guaranteed to work eventually, whether you participate or not. Eventually we will all be using alternative resources, because those will be the only resources left. And when all that's left are alternatives... well, that, my friends, is Nirvana.