WHAT! Flour gwain up?

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, fresh off the press! The price of flour is almost doubling... from 58c to damn near a $1. Didn't the Chicken Association announce last week that the cost of chicken {our Belizean staple} is increasing as well?

Now, if we add that to the price of gasoline, diesel, and kerosene... As a matter of fact all petroleum based products, with one barrel of the Black Gold floating somewhere around $110US... then we have the US economy in seriously recession and falling currency problems, so there goes the majority of our tourism industry. Does anyone remember the BTIA commercials? "Almost 40% of jobs in Belize are directly related to the tourism industry."

Does anyone have a calculator? Where the hell does that leave the common man?

We're in dire straits. Someone... come hold me! I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed and desperate!

Here we are, developing nation, 2008. We have oil. We have some of the most beautiful biolife the world has to offer. We have a great number of naturally intelligent people. We have fertile farmlands.

Here we are, developing nation, 2008. We have an oil company paying us somewhere around 7% of their earnings. We have our reefs being destroyed by the cruise tourism industry where we barely get one freaking dollar for every "tourist" that touches our blessed soil. We have a people unable to afford education, and those who can, flock to America, Canada, England, anywhere but here. We have foreign developers coming and buying our most prime pieces of land and Central Americans squatting on our sovereign territory.

We're living in a world of ever widening social disparity. The rich ARE getting richer. The poor ARE getting poorer. And it is getting harder and harder every single DAY for a man to jump this social gorge.

1 murder every 3 days. If I hear ONE more mother bawling on the TV saying, "My son wasn't bad," I'll scream! Our streets erupting in violence was NOT an overnight occurrence. No honey, from the time Johnny was a boy, he was running amok. What happened to discipline? What happened to respect? What happened to the BELIZEAN WAY. You shoulda mi BAX all rebel outta that boy long time and teach him to be a gentleman. You shoulda mi erase all this "thug this" "gansta that" nonsense outta his head LONG time and guide that boy toward some real dreams.

I am so disgusted with the direction my country is headed. I have to ask, how much lower do we need to go before we RISE as a community? What depths must we reach before we CLEAN our streets. From the Legislature, from the Judiciary, from the Police, from the churches, from the schools, and most of all from the average Belizean home, baby, we gotta make some BIG changes. The question is, are we ready?

Flour price going up. I need to get me some land and start to farm. How can I starve in a country such as this? With the grass so green. With the breezes so gentle? With the sun so warm? And with a people, who I believe -- I have to believe -- so wonderful?

Think, my brothers and sisters, think! How are we gonna solve the problems -- so many problems riddling such a small nation.

The Energy Question

I'm listening to people debate about the proposed 15% increase of electricity by BEL. I can't help but thinking, "HEY! Guys! Look at the big picture, please!" In this light, let me teach you a little something about energy and hopefully prompt some discussion and thought about energy on a national and global level. You may disagree with me. You may say I'm advocating for BEL, but this is my perspective of the truth.

Let's start off with some basic explanations. There are two kinds of energy -- renewable energy and nonrenewable energy. The difference between these is that renewable sources of energy are replenished at the same rate they are depleted. Look at the sun, wind, or waves, for example... as one gust of wind dies, another is born to replace it. Conversely, nonrenewable sources of energy take millions of years to form. Think about oil, gas, and coal. These products are remnants of life that have formed under intense heat and pressure as well of eons of time. Another thing I should add here is that nonrenewable sources of energy produce harmful by-products -- the greenhouse gases.

It's important to realize that up until modern time, humans have relied solely upon nonrenewable forms of energy -- also known as fossil fuels. They are easy to extract and give very efficient energy amounts. But in the past 100 years, our population has increased to the point of becoming unsustainable. To complicate matters a bit more, as modern men, we're each individually using more energy than ever before in our evolutionary history. At the rate most people live, we'd need about six Earth's to sustain our current standard of living!

Now I know you're thinking, why don't we jump into this renewable sources of energy boat! Well, it's easier said than done! First of all, let me discuss wind, solar, wave, and tide energy in one. The processes of harboring these energy forms have very low efficiency rates. The initial costs of these technologies are comparatively expensive to the amount of energy derived from them; moreover, they're extraction is very conditional on weather and geographic location. These options use considerable portions of land to produce a relatively small amount of energy. Bottom line, more efficient technologies {solar panels, wind turbines, wave-energy harnessers} are needed.

Secondly, let's look at hydroelectric generation. This is a sticky topic. Personally, I love it! I think it's a good option, has high efficiency, initial investment pays back for itself, relatively low environmental impact, and so on. Environmentalist hate this option though... and I just don't understand why. The biological footprint that a dam creates comparative to its energy generation is negligible. On a very positive note, hydroelectric generation emits no greenhouse gases.

Next we have biogas, biomass, and biofuel. These sources actually harvest decaying material and waste products from activities such as agriculture {Yes, bagash, remnants of our sugar production} and use them to create energy! The energy creation process is by combustion, carbon dioxide is a by-product, but much less carbon is produced. Additionally, much less energy is created and you need obscene amounts of material to create energy. Bottom line, even if we collected every piece of crap from every baby's diaper in Belize, we would still not meet our own energy demands.

Like nonrenewable energy sources, renewable sources are not without their drawbacks. They have relatively low efficiency, high initial investment cost, some negative environmental effects, and require large tracts of land. These reasons in a nutshell are why fossil fuels are still being used, even though their consumption is slowly killing the planet. Burning fossil fuels is very cheap, and only the rising oil prices are prompting the slow exploration of renewable sources of energy now. 10 years ago oil was barely $10US a barrel, now it's $107US a barrel... and the cost is only going higher. At our current rate of consumption, there isn't oil enough to sustain life for the next 100 years. The price will not lower.

Now, let's get off the global scale and look at tiny Belize. We need a program that incorporates several processes for energy generation, not just one. The electric company is doing that. Because we're developing nation, we need the cheapest option. Buying power from Mexico during off peak hours is that. We need to start becoming self sufficient. BEL is trying, but please realize that our power needs are growing at a faster rate as our generation capacity! Cost of living goes up... naturally. Theoretically, the money we should be making should increase too, but that's a different topic for a different day.

Hope this spawns some discussion... I can't include all I want to say in one blog, but I'm looking forward to your comments.