U.S. and Texas: It is too Dangerous to Vacation in Mexico

Texas Travel Advisory regarding Mexico:. See also here for similar U.S. warnings.

The Texas Department of Public Safety warned Americans to skip spring break vacations in Mexico, noting that ongoing violence poses a significant safety threat.

The warning —which adds to State Department advisories not to travel to large swathes of the country — comes in the wake of the kidnapping of four Americans in Mexico earlier this month. There's a "Level 4: Do Not Travel" advisory for Tamaulipas, the Mexican state the Americans were in when they were kidnapped.

In the meantime, here are the numbers of murders over the past year in various American cities:

Portland Oregon: 93 Philadelphia: 516 San Antonio: 231 Saint Louis: 200 Memphis: 288 New Orleans: 280 Chicago: 697 Houston: 435 Washington DC: 203 Kansas City: 167

Continue ReadingU.S. and Texas: It is too Dangerous to Vacation in Mexico

Conservation could eliminate the need to drill for any oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

The U.S. consumes about an almost unimaginable amount of oil every day: 20,680,000 barrels of oil per day (and see here). Keep in mind that each barrel contains 42 gallons. Thus, Americans currently use 20,680,000 barrels per day = 239 barrels per second = 10,000 gallons of oil per second.Therefore , we desperately need to maintain almost 4,000 drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico in order to keep drilling for oil, right? Not so fast. Why aren’t we seriously discussing our ability to entirely eliminate offshore drilling by getting just a little bit serious about conservation? Consider the following statistics, which should be on the front page of every newspaper in the United States because [caption id="attachment_12529" align="alignright" width="210" caption="Image: creative commons"]Image: creative commons[/caption] they prove that we don't need offshore drilling but that we do need to seriously implement conservation measures for many reasons (one of which is impending peak oil):

Projecting ahead to the year 2016, the total oil production from the Gulf of Mexico will never exceed 2.1 million barrels of oil per day. Within the next 10 years, total GOM oil production is expected to exceed 1.7 million barrels of oil per day (MMBOPD), a projection based on existing shallow and deepwater operator commitments as shown in Table 2 and Figure 2. If industry-announced discoveries and undiscovered resources realize their full potential, production could reach 2.1 MMBOPD.

This information comes from page 12 of “Gulf of Mexico Oil and Gas Production Forecast: 2007-2016,” published by the U.S. Department of the Interior. See also, this chart, Figure 2 on page 14 of this same report:

Continue ReadingConservation could eliminate the need to drill for any oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

And it’s causing senseless violence and wasting of tax dollars up here too

Mexico is the biggest supplier of marijuana to the United States, and the illegal drug trade is tearing Mexico apart.

Mexico has been wracked by murders connected to the drug trade. Last year, it suffered more than 6,500 drug-related killings, triple the number in 2007. And 2010 looks worse. As of mid-March, more than 2,000 people have died in drug-related homicides – which puts Mexico on pace for more than 10,000 such deaths this year. That's more than one every hour.
The linked article (from the Chicago Tribune) argues that California's upcoming ballot initiative legalizing marijuana would be the worst nightmare of the Mexican drug cartels. For the terrible numbers from Mexico at a glance, see here.

Continue ReadingAnd it’s causing senseless violence and wasting of tax dollars up here too

The U.S. War on Drugs by the numbers

In the current edition of Esquire Magazine, John H. Richardson mentions the:

startling lack of controversy that greeted last week's news that Mexico had suddenly decriminalized drugs — not just marijuana but also cocaine, LSD, and heroin.

In his article, Richardson describes the drug war in the U.S. with some staggering numbers. For instance, every year the U.S. "war on drugs" costs:

15,223 dead and $52.3 billion spent each year — which is, incidentally, almost enough to pay for universal health care.

One can't help but think of Einstein's well-used definition of insanity: "Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Continue ReadingThe U.S. War on Drugs by the numbers

Unnerving bus trips south of the border

I'm never forget my bus trip to Otavalo, two hours north of Quito Ecuador. I was traveling with my friend ("Susan") back in December, 1998. We decided to take the public bus from Quito. The trip only cost a couple dollars. All kinds of people, and several kinds of animals (e.g., chickens) piled onto the bus and off we went toward Otavalo, over some rather serious hills. It turned out to be a bus ride strong of heart. The bus driver took us around some rather serious mountain curves at high speeds that suggested that our high center of gravity would topple the bus over the edge of the road and it would then tumble down the mountain and burst into flames. This sort of accident never happened, but I was fairly certain it was going to happen. In fact, I was absolutely certain that it was going to happen on several occasions. Susan and I both agreed that we should not be alive today based upon that bus ride. Not only did the driver take the bus around sharp curves, but he passed other buses on the outside while going uphill around many of those same sharp blind curves. I will admit, the bus ride only cost us two dollars each, but we assumed that we would feel safe to our journey. Even before we got to the twisting mountain roads, the bus sped along since straight highway at about 60 miles an hour, even though there was a 3-foot shoulder on which tiny children were walking to school. Some of those children looked to be only four or five years old. I couldn't believe that the bus was actually shooting past these children, only two or three feet away. It made us all the more nervous to see flowers and crucifixes marking the highway deaths every few miles. Actually, I haven't come to the part of the story that made me the most nervous. While we were speeding around mountain curves, passing on the outside, the driver called to his assistant and told him to check out a mechanical problem with the bus. The driver did not pull over. Instead, the assistant opened up a panel on the floor of the bus (just to the right of the bus driver) and was reaching down into that big a hole with some tools while the bus was speeding around the mountain curves.

Continue ReadingUnnerving bus trips south of the border