WHAT??? $30 FOR POPCORN AT THE MOVIES?

Our speculative historian, Hubert Hindsight, is here again. Dr. Hindsight, you may recall, wrote a book in the year 2020, titled "What Were They Thinking?," in which he looked back on many of the foibles and follies of our era. We have the only known existing copy of the book, and Dr. H. has kindly given us permission to print excerpts. Here is one: .....The movement began in late 2007, and within a few years it had gained seemingly unstoppable momentum: USE ETHANOL as fuel for automobiles to reduce air pollution. President G.W. Bush had signed energy legislation in December of 2007 that would have required the production of 36 billion gallons a year by 2022---just a hop and a skip from now. But the momentum stalled after the "Popcorn Boycotts." Emmie and Howard Zerm, a young couple in Dayton, Ohio, were at the epicenter of the boycotts. A new movie house had just opened near their apartment, and they were the first in line on opening night. They were shocked to find that the concession stand was charging $30 for a tub of popcorn (with genuine butter on it.) They protested, but to no avail. "Take it or leave it," the theater manager said. Within days every cinema in the country boosted their popcorn prices accordingly---explanation follows. The Zerms wrote an angry letter to their local newspaper urging that people stop buying popcorn at the movies, and they quickly became the leaders of the Popcorn Boycott movement. The boycott worked. Not only did concession revenues plunge, but ticket sales also took a nosedive. Movie theater owners panicked, as did movie producers and everyone connected with the making of movies. All of Hollywood went into mourning. All of the interested parties mounted a campaign to explain the $30 popcorn. Here is a letter that was published in full page ads in almost every newspaper in the nation. "Dear Movie-goers, We know how disturbed you are about the sharp increase in the price of popcorn, but unfortunately it is an issue beyond our control. The price we have to pay for the kernels has gone so high, that even at $30 a tub we barely break even. Since the government is supporting the production of corn, which is used to make ethanol, farmers all over the world are planting corn and selling it to ethanol factories at ridiculously high prices. We have to pay for corn accordingly, and to stay in business we must pass that higher cost along to you, which we deeply regret. We want clean air as much as anyone, but we fear that ethanol is not going to solve our pollution problems. To make ethanol, consider all the gasoline that has to be used to plow the fields, to harvest the corn, to transport the corn to the ethanol factories, to refine the corn into ethanol and then to distribute the ethanol to retail stations. And then there's the butter: cows are fed corn, and they have to be milked, and the milk has to be made into butter, which has to be distributed to the theaters and melted. All of that can cause more greenhouse gasses than using ethanol would reduce. Net result: More pollution, not less. Further, all around the world so much corn is being so profitably grown for ethanol that other necessary--and less profitable--- food crops are being ignored. This is likely to cause severe hunger problems in many parts of the world. Also, forests and grasslands are being converted to cornfields, which is yet another threat to the balance of nature. It's a huge problem, and the worst might be yet to come. If you are willing to go to the movies and NOT have popcorn, you'll be helping to solve the problems of pollution, of hunger, and of unemployed movie actors. We know how you love your popcorn, but we are confident that you love the movies even more. So please come back. We'll have other snacks at good prices, and we all will be happy. Thank you. The Movies The letter worked. People began returning to the movies and they were able to sit for more than two hours without nibbling popcorn. Biofuel scientists, intrigued by this phenomenon, began to study other renewable crops that could be used instead of corn without upsetting the entire economic/agricultural balances. Now, as 2022 rapidly approaches, the issue is far from resolved. Hydrogen is giving ethanol a run for its money as the fuel of choice. But now protesters are claiming that the newly perfected means of cost-effectively extracting hydrogen from its most abundant source---H2O, or water---could deplete the Earth's water supply, and wouldn't that cause more problems? Now it's in the hands of the politicians...... For other excerpts from Hubert Hindsight's book, "What Were They Thinking?", see postings on Feb. 14, 2008 and January 24, 2008.