Who needs earthquakes?

Consumers got a different sort of jolt this week with news that the price of coffee was hovering near US$3 a pound, the highest price in more than three decades, forcing many coffee houses to consider raising prices or cutting services. This has obviously been brought on by bad weather in some of the world's top coffee-producing regions, but the price increases are just unnecessary. They could always find some other place to grow coffee, maybe an uninhabited island somewhere in the Carribbean or maybe Tahiti could claim Pitcairn Island for itself, hang all the child-molesters, evacuate the other 40 or so inhabitants, and then have the whole place overrun with coffee bushes. It's just a matter of finding somewhere good enough for a plantation.