It’s come to our attention that, in advance of the big Copenhagen summit on CO2, city officials placed tens of thousands of flyers in hotels, bars, and other establishments urging visitors to avoid a different type of emissions altogether—namely the sticky kind associated with patronizing the city’s many sex workers. We can just picture the bureaucrats patting each other on the backs after coming up with this idea. But the prostitutes are cunningly offering discounted rates to any customer who presents a flyer to them. Not only does this make the suits look like amateurs for being so easily outmaneuvered—in effect, it turns the flyers into coupons. We aren’t scientists, but that sounds like true sustainability at work. Now the question is: Can we somehow put the sex workers in charge of the summit? They’d put together an emissions deal that leaves everyone satisfied.
1931—Nevada Approves Gambling
In the U.S., the state of Nevada passes a resolution allowing for legalized gambling. Unregulated gambling had been commonplace in the early Nevada mining towns, but was outlawed in 1909 as part of a nationwide anti-gaming crusade. The leading proponents of re-legalization expected that gambling would be a short term fix until the state’s economic base widened to include less cyclical industries. However, gaming proved over time to be one of the least cyclical industries ever conceived.