Drive Thru's and The End of the World

Will Drive-Thru’s be the end of the world? Well, maybe.

The City of Los Angeles voted to lift a ban on drive-thru this week. The ban was in place because of the congestion it caused on the streets. The vote to lift the ban was because drive-thru operations bring in lots of revenue and the city needs revenue.

Leadership is about guiding an organization to a better place. Unfortunately, throughout the world (and the United States) leadership is failing because they have become shortsighted and the new vote is just one example.

The real drive behind the original ban was to stop the growth of unhealthy fast-food restaurants in areas of LA. The bill only passed because of the argument about traffic congestion.

In lifting the ban, not only is leadership ignoring the health consequences (come on down, unhealthy fast food), intelligence consequences (new studies show smog reduces IQ in children), environmental consequences (smog, gas, CO2 levels), and the traffic consequences (accidents, death, time delays). And why, because the shine of money today carries more weight than the costs that come three months later.
Will this vote end the world? Not likely, but the path is leading down a dark road toward a cliff.

I don’t usually buy fish in the market and I’m a HUGE fan of Commercial Fishing

As a diver, I hunt my own game when I want fish – spoils of the hunt and all that.

So why am I a huge fan of commercial fishing? Because commercial fishing will be extinct by 2048, unless we do something about the way we handle our environment.

In a report, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2006-11-02-overfishing-threat_x.htm , done by 14 ecologists and economists, analyzing fish populations for 4 years prior determined that by 2048 ninety percent of the fish and shellfish species that are hauled out of the ocean will be gone! Twenty-nine percent of the fish species have already collapsed (meaning no longer generating sustaining populations). The trend is clear and accelerating.

The plummet in fish populations isn’t just from commercial fishing, it’s from coastal area destruction, dredging of reefs and estuaries, and pollution. If the trend is going to be reversed, it will take cooperation from everyone.

I’m a fan of commercial fishing because I believe that 39 years is within their reality ‘vision’ and since they have the most to lose, might possibly fight the hardest to reverse the trend as soon as possible.