However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion. GEORGE WASHINGTON, Farewell Address, Sep. 17, 1796

Energy and the English Industrial Revolution, which is launched this week, suggests that the era not only stimulated unprecedented progress and growth, but opened a "Pandora's Box" of hazards. While new wealth was created and entire populations lifted out of poverty, the nature of economies also changed dramatically - from forms that were naturally self-limiting, to models which involve plundering finite natural resources without heeding the attendant dangers.

Globalization has shaped our era. Technology has minimized distances; ideas, values and news cross borders quicker than ever before. New definitions and complex debates over our identities as international and national citizens have arisen as a result. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. puts it: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

Only in America could a guy like Dahl take advantage of so many people. I know I have probably paid for dumb things in my lifetime, like Keds shoes or canned beets, but seriously, a rock?